Let me persuade you to pick a few flowers every week for your home

This posting will hopefully inspire you to join me picking weekly flowers. I cut flowers on a Friday evening, often accompanied by a glass of wine! The children are in bed and I spend half an hour pottering, snipping the odd stem, popping them in my bucket and savouring the peace that an evening in the garden brings, a perfect bridge from a hectic week into the weekend.

I fill the house with flowers, foliage, and hedgerow finds March through to December (January and February I make do with dried stems from the garden such as cardoons or nigella). To me cut flowers are as important to my home as pictures on the wall. Flowers lift a room giving colour, fragrance and a very special extra dimension to an interiors look and design. Weekly flowers from florists or farm shops are out of my budget and supermarket blooms are not to my taste, they tend to look a bit plastic and rarely have any scent. The solution is growing your own supply.

I have had a re-occurring conversation with many friends and family about cut flowers, they all love to have flowers in their homes, but most don’t have the time or inclination for a dedicated cutting garden. They all have lovely gardens full of blooms which they don’t dare pick for fear of ruining the display. It is my strong belief that taking one or two stems from a plant won’t in any way ruin a display; in fact it will probably improve it. There are three key facts to keep in mind:

  • Many plants work on the basis of producing flowers to create seed, pick those flowers, the plant then has to produce more flowers to fulfil their purpose in life, reproduction by spreading seed. This is the case for most annuals and many herbaceous perennials. So picking flowers for the home means more beautiful blooms in your garden.
  • Popping your gorgeous treasured bloom in vase on the kitchen window sill, means you’ll notice and appreciate them far more than when they were at the bottom of the garden.
  • Keep it simple. Unless you have borders bursting with flowers forget huge bouquets and hand tied displays, they require a large quantity of blooms with long straight stems. Think single stems in a vase, or just a few blooms. Use small vases, I’ve collected mine over several years and they’re nearly always saved from going in the bin. Old room fragrance reed diffusers are great for single stems. Any small jar that doesn’t have the ridges for a screw top, spice jars are often good examples, you just need to snap the plastic lid off. Long shot glasses are also a favourite of mine for 3-5 stems.

small vasesThree old room fragrance bottles, an old sake bottle, a supermarket spice jar, and a long shot glass (from left to right)

Single stem rose in a vaseSingle stem rose

Mock Orange flowers in a vaseMock Orange, a fabulous scent drifts through the house.

Garden flowers in an old spice jarA few flowers in the old spice jar.

Small flowers displays look great by themselves dotted around the house or grouped together in a display.

Mixed flower displayA selection of vases as a central table display

Hopefully I’ve inspired you to pick a couple flowers a week to pop in vase and enjoy. Believe me, if you miss a week you’ll notice, your home will look bare.

A few June Flowers

I’ve just spent a lovely half hour pottering round the garden this evening cutting flowers for a dinner party with great friends tomorrow night. We’ve had a scorcher of a day for June (26°c), so I’ve waited for the temperature to cool before picking, if not the flowers would have wilted and their vase life significantly reduced.A few flowers from the garden

Netting the cut flower border

If you’re a well organised gardener you will have netted your cutting garden soon after planting out your annuals. If you’re like me, juggling many balls in the air at once, it will of been on your important to do list buried under a pile of paper on your desk and then put to the back of your mind.

Netting plants for cut flowers is essential to encourage the flower stems to grow straight and long, perfect specimens for cutting. It also protects the plants from wind damage. I use the wide green plastic pea netting often used for beans and peas to climb up. It’s run across the border supported by my home grown hazel stakes. I adjust the level of the netting depending upon the height of the plant. I was organised enough to have this in mind when planting out, so planted the tallest plants at one end of the border and worked down to the shortest at the opposite end. Now I must confess that plastic green netting is not really my style, and you might be put off using it, it’s not initially a great look. But, I promise in a month when the cutting border is in full production the netting will be completely hidden by the plants that have grown through it.

Early yesterday morning when checking the local BBC weather forecast I noticed a weather warning for unusually high winds that afternoon, night and following day. This warning did not register with me until this morning when the wind was blasting up the garden with force, ripping leaves from trees and flattening my annual plants. At this point I remembered the need to net the cutting border. After hammering in the hazel stakes at speed, I started to unravel the pea netting I’d bought a few weeks ago. Well, this resulted in what could have been a ridiculous sketch in a comedy show. The netting tangled together whilst being blown from me weaving itself into complex knot that rivalled my children’s attempts at knitting. As I stood there trying to unravel the mess, being battered by the wind rushing with force off the fields, I managed with bad temper and ill humour to secure a few centimetres at a time. Some hours later the task was complete and well worth it as it stabled my cosmos, dill and antirrhinum all of which had suffered snapped limbs. I will try and prioritise this important task next year!

Netting the cutting borderThe cut flower border, finally netted and protected

Weeds in a bottle

My three year old presented me with some grass he’d picked from the garden this afternoon. As a dutiful Mother I popped it in a vase. We both admired how beautiful the seed heads looked and decided to go back out and gather some more. They are now proudly on display in the kitchen.

Grass in a bottle

This grass is not some magnificent ‘Stipa’, just weeds that have got a bit out of control; every garden should have them, and use them as fabulous produce from the garden! Now what can I do with creeping buttercup, nettles, bindweed, brambles and horsetail?

Planting out the dahlia border

Those who regularly read the blog will know that my number one garden passion is the dahlia. Dahlias produce magnificent flowers in gorgeous vibrant colours, varied shapes and their sizes can range from a delicate 5cm pom pom to a colossal dinner plate sized beauty. Dahlias are the most abundant and lavish cut and come again crop in both the flower and vegetable world. They look stunning as single stems or a bunch. In an arrangement of blooms they are the show stopping star. I love them.

Half of my dahlia collection has been in the ground over winter, topped with a heavy mulch of wood chip to protect the tubers from frosts. The other half were potted up with slightly moist multipurpose compost and stored overwinter in the conservatory. In late winter I started to gently water the pots and shoots from the tubers emerged. These dahlias have flourished many reaching a good two feet, one is even flowering. Once there was little risk of frost they were put out to harden off.

First dahlia of the yearDahlia Con Amore, flowering in May!

I removed the insulating wood mulch from the dahlias left in the ground a few weeks ago. Shoots are now emerging from all of these, even though we had some cold nights reaching -10°c this winter.

Dahlias ready to be planted outThe dahlias over wintered in the conservatory

I’ve weeded, enlarged (a few additional beauties have been acquired) and planted up the dahlia bed. The cleared wood chip used to protect the tubers overwinter has come in useful making paths between the dahlias, giving access for cutting the flowers. I am also experimenting with gladioli this year so have a row of acid green and dark rich purple galds which I’ve sneaked into this border.

Around each dahlia I have built a frame made from my coppiced hazel. They all need good firm support to grow lovely long straight stems for cutting and to protect them from wind that can easily flatten and snap unsupported stems.

The dahlia bedThe dahlia bed with a coppiced hazel framework to give support

Lilac in an old beer bottle

Lilac flower

I’ve just picked these fabulous lilac flowers. Lilac is an essential in the garden at this time of year, their spires of blooms look so majestic and the fresh jasmine like scent drifts through the air. The rest of the year it’s an insignificant dull shrub, but it really is worth it for the flowers in Spring.

Lilac flowers can wilt when cut and placed in a vase. To help prevent this, cut slits into their woody stems at the bottom, this helps the flow of water, keeping the flower fresh.

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.

Sweet Peas

Through the post today arrived my Sweet Pea seeds, beautifully packaged in their silver vacuum sachets.

Sweet Pea SeedsSweet Pea seeds ready for sowing

The sweet peas I chose are Mrs Collier, a lovely creamy white; Almost Black, as it suggests a very dark purple; Parfumiere Mix and More Scent another creamy white. I have selected varieties good for cutting, hopefully they’ll have long stems, a good vase life and a scent that will drift throughout the house come summer. I usually sow sweet peas a little earlier in the year, in the conservatory. This year I was a bit late ordering the seed and have decided to sow directly into the cutting garden border. I have built a frame with our home grown hazel stakes at the end of the border for the sweet peas to clamber up. At the bottom I’ve popped in pea sticks (the ends of the coppiced hazel) to help them on their way up.

Cutting Garden BorderThe finished cutting garden border, at the far end is the sweet pea climbing frame

Pea Sticks for Sweet PeasPea Sticks at the bottom of the sweet pea frame, to help them on their way

I used a dibber to make holes about 3 cm deep and 10 cm apart and popped in two seeds to each hole. If both seeds germinate I will discard the weaker plant to give the stronger one the best possible chance. Sowing directly may mean the sweet peas take a few extra weeks to bloom over those sown indoors, but, the plants should be healthy and vigorous as they hate their roots being disturbed when planting on.

Muscari

Picked from the garden this afternoon. Very simple, a  favourite of mine during Spring. Muscari (Grape Hyacinth) and Daffodils tend to be my first cut flowers from the garden each year. From now on the house will look empty without vases of flowers scattered everywhere.Muscari or Grape Hyacinth

Dahlias

I love dahlias. I first came across them in the Dahlia Garden at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, North California in 2005. My passion for them was instant, each flower a beautiful sculpture, the vast range of colour and shape just looked stunning en masse. It became the highlight of my California holiday, an enlightening moment. The Big Sur or El Capitan in Yosemite paled into insignificance. In the past I’d steered well clear of what I considered to be fuddy-duddy, complicated, troublesome, blowsy flowers. Now they are my slightly obsessive garden priority. How on earth can a girl live without dahlias!

Dahlias

With a little bit of love and attention a dahlia will pay you back 10 fold and more. I fill the house with them from June to the last frosts in November. I tend to leave my dahlia tubers in the ground over winter. After the first frost I cut them back and cover them with a 30cm mulch of leaf mould, compost, wood chip or whatever I’ve got to hand. At the end of March I’ll take off the mound of mulch, feed with fish, blood and bone, and allow the dahlias to shoot through in their own time. If you want to move dahlias or divide them, the tubers need to be dug up after the first frost, cleaned and left to dry for a couple of days in a greenhouse. Then cover with a dusting of compost and store in a dry shed or garage where they won’t freeze. Come March pot them up, and let them grow on in a greenhouse or conservatory, by May when there is no frost risk, plant them into the garden.

Most of the tubers I’ve dug up in the past have survived the winter, sadly my all time favourite ‘Thomas A Edison’ rotted to a mush when we moved. The husband, who must listen to some of my witterings, gave me replacement tubers for Christmas. A lovely friend who has a Brewery making the most amazing ale in South West France (www.brasserieduquercorb.com), treated me to Dahlia ‘Cafe au Lait’, a variety I’d coveted for some time. So I’ve been in my conservatory (home to all seed sowing and precious plants) potting up my new dahlias. I’m excited to see the blooms in a few months.

Dahlia tuberCafe au Lait tuber ready to be potted up.