Flowering shrubs for the cutting garden
Is there any greater pleasure for a gardener than harvesting and enjoying homegrown bounty, whether it’s a sunwarmed tomato or an armful of cut flowers?
Just as garden-to-table meals satisfy veggie growers, gardento-vase floral arrangements delight gardeners who enjoy cut flowers.
Creating a cutting garden may seem daunting, advise the experts at the National Gardening Bureau (www.ngb.org), but there’s a simple solution for growing beautiful blooms without planting hundreds of seeds or dozens of bulbs: add flowering shrubs to your landscape.
Benefits of growing shrubs for a cutting garden
A beautiful addition to gardens, flowering shrubs offer gorgeous blooms and foliage for floral arrangements without leaving holes in the landscape when harvesting the flowers. Professional growers refer to shrubs affectionately as woodies, or woody ornamentals. Many parts of woodies, including shrubs and trees, can be used in floral arrangements: flowering branches, twigs, cones, berries, and even colourful foliage all add interest to your own unique, personal bouquets.
Unlike cutting gardens that rely on labour- and time-intensive seed sowing and bulb planting each year, adding flowering shrubs to the garden provides ongoing harvests for years with little effort. While the initial investment may be greater than growing flowers from seed, over time your budget (and back) will thank you, as the shrubs continue to flourish and produce beautiful blooms each year.
Long-lasting ornamental shrubs require little maintenance, although many woodies benefit from pruning right after flowering. By cutting flowers for use in bouquets, you’re a step ahead of the maintenance schedule!
Which flowering shrub is best for your cutting garden?
With literally thousands of flowering shrubs available, how do you know which is best for your cutting garden?
Part of the decision is personal preference: select shrubs with flowers that you love. Perhaps lilacs remind you of the bouquets your mom placed on the kitchen table, snipped from the large backyard hedges. Or maybe you adore the timeless elegance of red roses. Choose shrubs that speak to you — but make sure to check the shrubs’ requirements before you buy. Local nurseries and garden centres carry shrubs that work well in our area, but don’t be afraid to ask!
When creating your cutting garden, you’ll want beautiful flowers, of course, but also consider foliage and other fillers for your flower arrangements. Add elements that provide yearround options for your vases, like forsythia branches for forcing or evergreen foliage for winter arrangements. The options are endless.
To get you started on your garden-to-vase journey, we’ve featured some favourite shrubs which are easy to incorporate into your landscape for a long season of cut flowers.
The star of floral arrangements: Roses
Is there any flower more beloved for bouquets than roses? Classic and elegant, roses look lovely on their own or paired with complementary blooms and foliage.
If you love rose bouquets, you’ll love the satisfaction of growing your own roses. But where do you begin? The options can be overwhelming. From old-world heirloom roses to beautifully formed hybrid tea roses to grandiflora and floribunda roses, you’ll find 300 species and tens of thousands of cultivars when searching for roses.
Roses require full sun for best health and most prolific blooms.
Start by selecting your favourite colour palette and form. Do you love soft, romantic colours, like cream and pink, or do you prefer vivid varieties in bright orange and yellow? Do you adore cabbage roses, with heavy heads filled with hundreds of overlapping petals, or do you like the clean, elegant form of tea roses?
Once you narrow down your esthetic preferences, consider your time commitment. Some roses require higher maintenance than others, but all roses will need a bit of attention to look their best and produce perfect blooms for cutting. Check your plants frequently for pests, especially aphids and Japanese beetles, which can quickly decimate your pretty blooms.