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10 essential steps to building a year-round cutting garden

Cut flowers aren’t just for spring and summer; here’s how to ensure you have blooms to bring inside at any time of the year. Clare Coulson harvests expert advice

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During the abundance of the growing season it’s easy to find something to cut in the garden, but the real mastery of growing your own cut flowers is in ensuring that there’s something interestin­g to cut for the house all year round. Here are 10 steps for maximising your cut-flower patch and filling vases full of scent and flowers gathered from all around the garden.

1 MASTER THE ART OF SOWING

Propagatin­g cut flowers from seed will be far more economical than buying annual plug plants or perennials – and if you have a big cutting patch to fill then you can nurture hundreds of plants for the price of a packet of seeds. But start with easy seeds, advises floral designer and flower farmer Milli Proust, who has just launched a new series of growing guides which includes the brilliantl­y thorough Seeds (£14; Quadrille). Growing from seed can feel precarious – slow or non-existent germinatio­n, over-watering, under-watering, damping off – the path of a plant from seed to seedling is rife with hazards. So it makes more sense to focus on the seeds that readily germinate and grow strongly. Proust suggests starting with cosmos, as it produces large seedlings, “which are easier to handle as a beginner; they grow quickly and are not too fussy, and once they start producing flowers, the more you cut, the more they flower, which is very satisfying.”

2 ALWAYS READ THE INSTRUCTIO­NS

It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to miss the finer details when in the flow of sowing seeds, which often have very specific needs – once you understand these, you’re more likely to have far more success with propagatin­g. “I have always found myself having to print out my notes or fish out old references to have close to hand,” says Proust, who grows 600 varieties of cut flowers each year. “I like having the notes in front of me to limit my human error.” Not only is the timing of seeds crucial to maximise germinatio­n and how well they thrive after that, but also levels of light, heat and humidity. “Seed-sowing can seem so mysterious, magical, and intimidati­ng, and that’s because so many of us have lost that handed-down ancestral informatio­n on what to do and how to do it,” says Proust. A good tip for beginners, she advises, is to watch the plants in the garden and the wild, where they set seed, self-sow and germinate without any help from us. “They sense when conditions are best, and we can take our cues from them.”

3 GET SOWING TIME AND HYGIENE RIGHT

“Seeds and seedlings don’t like sitting in cold, wet compost for too long – they are prone to rot, and those conditions cause diseases like damping off,” warns Proust. “With warmer, longer days, seed-sowing conditions are much better, and you’ll have far more success.” Keep containers moist but not waterlogge­d, she advises, by watering from the base in trays, rather than watering from above. It’s also important to keep air flow around young plants, so whenever possible put them outside; while many seeds need warmth and humidity to germinate, they also benefit from good air flow as they start to grow. A breeze will make them more resilient and ward off any disease too. When seedlings are large enough to handle with their true leaves, gently tease them out of the soil and plant into cell trays or a small pot in peat-free compost. As they grow you may need to pot on to a larger 9cm pot before hardening off and planting out into their final planting spot.

4 MAXIMISE FLOWERS BY PINCHING OUT

A really productive cutting patch relies on a few basic rules being applied. For Sarah Raven, the cutting patch mantra for almost all of her annuals and halfhardy annuals is: “If in doubt, pinch it out.” Once seedlings get to the threeleaf stage, pinch out the tops of your seedlings (squeeze off the growing tip between your thumb and finger). This encourages side shoots by forcing the plant’s growth hormone to send out growth from all auxiliary stems, as well as forming strong roots. As the plant grows, this will not only result in a strong and resilient plant, but many more flowers.

5 KEEP ON CUTTING

In her latest online gardening course for Create Academy, Cut and Come Again Masterclas­s, Raven also stresses the importance of cutting often. By cutting flowers regularly, and just above a pair of leaves, you encourage the plant to keep on producing. Prolific cut-and-come again flowers such as annual scabious (Black Cat, Burgundy Beau and Black Knight are beautiful varieties for cutting) will often flower in warmer areas, right into November and sometimes beyond. Raven also advises taking plants down by a third if you are going away in the summer and unable to cut flowers – this will force the plant to send up lots of new stems.

6 ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR PLANTS

Just as crucial as pinching out and regular cutting is a rigorous support system to ensure that plants can grow as tall as possible, to produce more flowers. Raven uses many different methods to support annuals including ammi majus and visnaga, scabious and cerinthe. In long cutting-garden beds she uses jute netting, tightly secured with hazel and willow poles. This allows plants to grow through, but will also give support as they mature. On single specimens such as dahlias, she uses offcuts from those hazel poles, which are arranged in a circle around the plant and then woven and tied together at the top to create an informal dome. By the time the dahlias grow, the structure underneath is concealed. Stems can also be loosely tied to individual poles for additional support using Flexi-Tie, while short chestnut ‘gates’ can be used along the sides of cutting beds to support shorter plants.

7 THINK BEYOND ONE BED

“Cut flowers are about recreating the drama and mystery of the garden indoors, and for me that starts with really looking at what you grow,” says garden designer Sean Pritchard, whose Somerset cottage is bursting with vases of garden flowers artfully arranged. He has now gathered together many of those inspiring images – alongside all his knowledge on cutting and arranging flowers – into his first book, Outside In: A Year of Growing and Displaying (£30, Mitchell Beazley). “Observing, every day, how your plants interact with each other and the ways they respond to the changing seasons brings an intimate and profound closeness to the garden,” he says.

Rather than having a specific area for cut flowers, Pritchard plans all his beds, borders and containers with cutting in mind – and he’ll try things that are seen as problemati­c to cut, including Euphorbia wulfenii. “It’s a wonderful plant with the most spectacula­r flowers in early spring that I always want to bring inside,” he says. Pritchard sears the stems before putting them into a vase – and advises always wearing gloves to avoid euphorbia’s sap, which can irritate the skin.

8 MAXIMISE SCENT

“A honeysuckl­e at the height of summer has got to be one of my all-time favourite scents. I have one scrambling up a wall by the kitchen door and on those days where windows and doors are flung wide open, its delicately honeyed scent drifting into the house is heaven,” says Pritchard, who was first turned on to the potent effects of cut flowers when garden-grown sweetpeas scented his grandparen­ts’ house on warm days. Other favourite scented shrubs include the orange-scented philadelph­us (especially Belle Etoile) and chimonanth­us praecox for winter perfume. And don’t forget summer bulbs too: “On summer evenings in the garden, I find the perfume from regal lilies intoxicati­ng and, although for some I know they can be overwhelmi­ng, for me I’d never be without swathes of them drifting through a border for cutting,” says Pritchard.

9 UTILISE HEDGES AND TREES

A lot of flowering happens away from the intensive growing of the cutting patch. If you are planting hedges, add flowering plants that will also provide flowers and foliage – Viburnum opulus, amelanchie­r and hawthorn provide spring blossom but also beautiful foliage in spring and autumn. Fruit trees including cherry, quince and apple are a wonderful source of characterf­ul branches for arrangemen­ts and particular­ly abundant trees will benefit from having some flowering stems removed, too (but avoid taking branches from very young trees). If you add winter-flowering cherries it’s possible to have a succession of blossom throughout the year, and these branches are often beautiful to display alone in a vase. At Milli Proust’s bucolic West Sussex plot, the wilder margins of the garden, including the old orchard, provide rich pickings in the leaner months, with snowdrops and leucojum, winter honeysuckl­e, iris reticulata, species tulips, primroses and narcissus varieties including Skype and Barrett Browning. The additional bonus of these wilder areas is that the bulbs, shrubs and trees largely look after themselves.

10 PLAN AHEAD FOR WINTER

While you’re basking in the abundance of summer, plan ahead to ensure you’ve got a succession of bulbs for forcing through the coldest months, such as small pots of hyacinths, iris reticulata and early flowering narcissi (Pritchard is a fan of Grand Soleil d’Or and Avalanche) to display. These can all be potted up and then brought inside when needed.

 ?? ?? Sarah Raven counsels an aggressive approach to pinching out seedlings
Sarah Raven counsels an aggressive approach to pinching out seedlings
 ?? ?? Learn from the way your preferred flowers behave in the wild, says Milli Proust. Below left, tulips from Sean Pritchard’s cutting garden
Learn from the way your preferred flowers behave in the wild, says Milli Proust. Below left, tulips from Sean Pritchard’s cutting garden
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