Planting up the cutting garden

When I was building and then filling the cut flower border with top soil and compost, 14 metres felt like a very long and unnecessary way. Now that I’ve emptied the conservatory of plants I’ve decided it’s really not that long at all, a few more metres would have been great. I’ve been amazingly disciplined, keeping the number of plants I’ve put in the border to a minimum. Surplus plants have made their way to the children’s garden at school. With this restraint, I have just managed to fit all the cut flower varieties sown from seed in. I can’t wait to start filling the house with the flowers from this border.

The cutting borderThe ciutting border, detailing the varieties I’ve just planted

On my initial design way back in December /January I’d planned on two 14 metre beds running either side of the path. When it came to building the beds, two felt excessive, in size, cost and my energy required to fill them. I now know that come late winter next year, I’m going to be building that additional bed. There are so many more plants I want to grow for cutting, and all those seductive seed catalogues will start coming through the post at the end of the year, they are just too tempting.

2 Replies to “Planting up the cutting garden”

  1. Your excess plants are always appreciated at school! The children very much enjoyed putting them in.
    Now…if only we could get our raised beds to resemble the ordered, weed-free restraint of yours, we’d be on to something!

    1. Thank you for your kind comments. Believe me, I have a fabulous collection of weeds in the raised beds, real gardens have to have weeds! What my garden doesn’t need is horsetail! I discovered it for the first time a few weeks ago on the far side of the pond, today I spotted a horsetail shoot in the herbaceous border at the bottom of the garden. I am not a happy gardener!

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