SELF- RAISING FLOWERS

HERE’S AN IDEA: TURN A TIRED AREA OF YOUR GARDEN INTO A CUTTING- FLOWER PATCH AND YOU’LL BE PICKING BLOOMS ALL SUMMER

“For everyday loveliness, sow sweet peas... so benevolent with their blooms you can pick them daily”

When I got married 20 years ago, I abandoned my florist-bought bouquet in favour of a hastily picked posy of mallow, lavender and pink penstemon. The traditional bouquet of ivory roses was spectacular, but it wasn’t very me. I was looking for something real and fun and full of life – just like I wanted my marriage to be. These days I’m always on the lookout for sprigs and foliage to steal from the garden; a caramel twig of winter honeysuckle or the first precious daffodil of spring to pop in a jar. To meet this need to forage, I dedicate a small patch every summer for sowing annuals – a few square metres gives me flowers almost for free. It also frees me from the guilt of flower air miles and the blooms are even more special because I’ve grown and gathered them myself.

This is a guide to creating your own cutting patch: it’s easier than you think and you don’t need a huge garden to pull it off.

FIRST, DO THE GROUNDWORK

Select a sunny patch in your garden. It could be part of a neglected border or a tired bit of lawn that would be better used for flowers. If your soil is heavy clay, in other words it cracks in summer and sits wet in winter, fork in homemade compost, recycled green waste compost from your council, or a bag from the garden centre. If your soil is the other extreme – sandy and dry – then adding compost will mean that it holds onto moisture better and flowers won’t go over so quickly. Should you have dark brown crumbly soil full of worms, then lucky you – get sowing! Whatever your soil, weed well beforehand, remove large stones from the surface and tramp it down flat after digging to prevent waterlogging following rain.

NOW CHOOSE YOUR FLOWERS

If you don’t have green fingers, start with long-lasting perennials and shrubs from your local nursery or garden centre. A trio of scented ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ roses underplanted with pincushions of astrantia, daisy-like echinacea, and the foliage of bronze fennel all make good picking and will supply dozens of fragrant bunches. While autumn is the time for planting daffs and tulips, spring is good for getting gladioli and allium bulbs in the ground, as well as dahlias, with their stunning cactus and anemone shapes.

For everyday bunches of loveliness, sow sweet peas. They’re easy to grow, and so benevolent with their blooms, you can pick every day of summer. There’s a wide range of colour, too. Build a hazel or bamboo wigwam for them to twine around and plant at the base of each strut. As seedlings appear, encourage them to clamber onto the frame with twine. Tender seedlings are a gift to molluscs, so sprinkle some wildlife-friendly slug pellets, too.

GET GROWING

Sowing from seed is the cheapest way and offers the widest choice of blooms. Somerset

“Rows produce fewer but betterquality flowers... while a patch looks less allotment-like”

flower farmer Georgie Newbery of Common Farm Flowers warns against sowing too much seed: “You’ll be overwhelmed. Five or six fresh seeds of each variety will give you plenty to cut from.” Grow only what you want in your bunch, advises Georgie, “An umbellifer such as Ammi

majus for lace, spikes such as clary sage or grasses for liveliness, sweet peas for scent, cosmos for a daisy shape, and green nicotiana or bupleurum for greenery.”

For a succession of flowers through summer, meadow seed mixes are fantastic. Last year, I had a whole summer’s worth of posies from a box of Meadow in My Garden seed (meadowinmygarden.co.uk) sown in four square metres of soil. It’s brilliant if you just fancy scattering some seed and waiting to see what happens. I had lime-green umbels of dill, lipstick-pink lavatera and gypsophila in June, followed by purple salvia, butter-yellow rudbeckia and daisy-like zinnia in sweet-shop shades right into late summer. The dried seed-heads of the dill and cone-flowers lasted until they were felled by winter rains.

When sowing seed, there are two choices: neat rows or in patches – both allow you to distinguish flower seedlings from weeds. Rows produce fewer but better-quality flowers on longer stems while a patch looks less allotment-like and when one flower goes over, the gap is filled by a neighbour.

With container-grown plants, use the width of the plant as your guide and plant it that far away from the next, placing sprawling types close to paths for a soft, romantic look.

ARRANGE YOUR BLOOMS

Once, flower arranging was all about blocks of oasis and stiff, imported flowers. Fortunately, this been replaced by a wild, in-season and natural hedgerow feel. According to floral designer India Hurst of Worcestershire flower studio Vervain: “It’s all about bringing the outdoors in.”

When arranging, India suggests taking your cue from the flowers: “Follow the shapes they want to create rather than forcing it on them. I choose one flower to build my colour palette from. Try taking a slightly older hellebore and pick out those muddy tones with dried honesty seedheads, tulips and twigs of British trees like hazel and beech, and blossom.”