FLOWERS THAT MAKE THE CUT
ONE of the many great joys of a garden is being able to cut a few flowers and bring them indoors to put in a vase.
They bring a flavour of outside to wherever you may be, at your desk working, whipping up a tasty dish in the kitchen or sitting chatting with family or friends.
If the flowers are scented so much the better.
However, if the very thought of cutting flowers brings out your protective instincts don’t imagine I’m giving the snipper in your life carte blanche to run wild with the scissors through your best perennials.
It is safe to harvest the odd bloom or two without doing much harm but if you’re keen on having regular bunches for vases it’s worth setting up a small cutting garden and growing annuals especially for the job, and now is a good time to start.
You can make a separate bed or just use a few rows at the sunny end of the veg patch. If you haven’t already done your winter digging, work in plenty of compost or manure then in March rake in a dressing of organic general-purpose fertiliser.
When it’s time to sow and plant remember some of the best traditional annual flowers for cutting – after must-have sweet peas – include asters, stocks, larkspur, statice and flowering tobacco (nicotiana).
The lime-green varieties are favoured by arrangers as they go with anything.
For those of a fashionable bent try sunflowers, antirrhinums and Ammi major, an impressive annual cow parsley.
If you have room add some dahlias and a few classic perennials such as scabious, gypsophila and pinks; sea holly is great – choose the biennial Eryngium giganteum and ice plant (Sedum spectabile).
Start now and your summer borders will be safe this season.