SUSIE’S GARDEN

Cut flowers are an opportunity to try something a little bit different, bringing all new colours and scents to your garden

Apopular talk of mine is entitled GrowYour OwnCutFlowers and it is one that I gave on behalf of My Weekly to an enthusiastic audience at Alexandra Palace in March. Growing your own saves money, but is also a way to connect with the garden; I enjoy pottering around, scissors in hand, looking to see what is flowering and noticing things as I go.

At the Chelsea Flower Show this year, one of my favourite gardens was the Anneka Rice Colour Cutting Garden. Designed by Sarah Raven, it was one of the Radio 2 Feel Good gardens, and was filled with a profusion of colour. All were cut-and-come-again flowers, planted in sumptuous combinations: orange lupins with bronze fennel, red cosmos and purple dahlias, blue delphiniums and apricot foxgloves.

A large jug painted azure blue held salmon-coloured opium poppies and purple alliums and, of all the show gardens, it was the one where I noticed the most bees. Most poppy flowers don’t last more than 24 hours, even if you sear the stem ends, though the seed pods last indefinitely. But on Sarah Raven’s website there’s one called “Candy Floss” which was bred as a cut flower as it holds onto its petals.

I, too, grow annuals as cut flowers with cosmos, dahlias, marigolds, echium and larkspur in rows for easy picking. From the flower

borders I cut perennials, using the lime green of ladies mantle as a filler and a good background for bright colours. Favourites are slender blue Siberian iris, pink bistort, cirsium thistles and hardy geraniums. I grow wildflowers in the borders so I can use red campion, bluebells and forget-me-nots for cutting.

Herbs give scent as well as colour and foliage, so I pick bunches of rosemary, sage flowers, purple chives and sprigs of marjoram. Grasses last well in water and make a soft backdrop to colourful flowers. And I’ve a collection of jugs from charity shops and potteries, so there’s a changeable selection of containers in which to display them.