How to Plan and Plant a Cutting Flower Garden: Part II – Flower Selection and Mapping

I’m continuing to share the details of how I planned my cut flower garden – in case you missed Part I – Planning and Preparing your Cut Flower Garden, feel free to check that out!

In today’s post, I am sharing the flowers I selected and why. There are so many flower varieties out there, but my main “must-haves” were easy maintenance, stems that were long enough, continual blooming and LOTS of vibrant colors!

Flower Selection

This was A LOT of fun! In the spring, I took a small list of flowers I definitely wanted in up to our local garden center and picked out the seed packets. Now, I did do some background research from multiple sites to narrow down my flower list. I was already knowledgeable of my favorites, but it was nice to find some different variety seed packets.

Speaking of seed packets, these were so much fun to snag as they all were pretty much $1-$2 per pack. The more expensive flower varieties were purchased in the form of bulbs and tubers- which are more mature forms of the plants and lead to a better blooming plant! The Dahlia tubers and bulbs were a little more expensive $6-$10 (but my goal is to winterize these and replant come spring).

Here is a list of the flowers I picked up – some annuals (last only one season) some perennials (come back every year, marked with P)

Dahlias – AMAZING color varieties, large flowers (some small), continuous cutting and blooming
Gladiolus – blooms one and done – have to stagger plant timing, love colors and height in arrangements
Zinnias – INCREDIBLE non-stop bloomer, I feel there was an endless supply always! Awesome colors too!
Cosmos – These light and airy flowers are dreamy to add to an arrangement
Poppies – had no luck with these, but like the look of them 🙁
Snapdragons – love snapdragons, didn’t have the best luck, but looking forward to trying again next year
Marigolds – these flowers are super fragrant and durable! Yellows and oranges
Bachelor’s Button (Cornflower): Produced small little blue, periwinkle blooms – added a different look in some of my arrangements
Foxglove (P) – Didn’t have luck this year
Delphinium (P) – Didn’t have much luck this year, but produce a nice stem of flowers – somewhat similar to glads
Carnations (P) – produced some nice durable stems, nice colors too!
Hollyhock (P) – will bloom for me next year
Aster – no luck
Shasta Daisy (P – will add some pizzazz to arrangements, will probably take off next year
Coneflower (P) – same as above!
Phlox (P) – ditto, ABOVE
Candytuft – I planted these in a tough spot but they produced cute little flowers, not big enough stem for arrangement though
Peonies (P) – planted for next season – early bloomer and don’t last long, DON’T plant in your garden beds!
Roses (P) – THEIR MY FAVS as I’m sure everyone can relate!
Sweet William: Super cute little flower, same type of issue as Candytuft!

Dahlias – my all time FAVORITE! I planted a bunch of these!

Zinnias, these are my new favs! Their long stems make them great for arrangements and I felt there was an endless supply of flowers all season!

I returned home with my packets, bulbs and tubers and starting mapping out my game plan. Looking back, I definitely overbought (probably because I was so excited!) and next year, I will be refining the list based on personal preference. Some of the varieties may have not done well due to spacing and light.

Mapping

First I started with a sketch, which we changed the garden bed design shortly after:

Then I got crazy with a computer design…

This electronic copy will be super helpful to update in the future though. I already had a difficult time finding the hard copy of this!

It is so important to read every seed packet to determine how much light the flowers will need, how much spacing, how tall they get and when to thin out each seedling after they sprout up from the soil.

As you can see I made note of that above (there were more flowers listed on the back side of the page, but you get the picture!). My OCD self might end up transferring this info into an excel file next time around!

Lastly, I tried to color coordinate – keeping pinks, purples and whites – then reds, oranges and yellows near one another (not super important, just a personal preference!)

There is definitely so much I learned from this year that I can’t wait to try out next year. We had a really cold and wet spring and I don’t think that helped some of the varieties I planted. I was too scared to plant super early outside because I didn’t want to lose any flowers and I feel like my spacing/thinning had overcrowded some varieties, but again I am doing this for fun and not putting too much pressure on myself!

Hoping these lists and “maps” will inspire you and be helpful! I did a lot of research behind the scenes and cannot wait to learn more this upcoming year!