The delightful demands of the cutting garden
There is an inherent clash between the gardener who lovingly raises flowers and the florist who wants to cut them for the vase. Often, they are the same person.
The cutting garden was invented to get around this problem. If you set aside an area to grow blooms for cutting — essentially a vegetable garden for flowers — you can snip stems in their prime without the angst. Indeed, a decimated cutting garden is a successful cutting garden.
This seems such an obvious and delightful use of one’s real estate that you wonder why everyone doesn’t devote a corner of the yard to a little flower farm. Delve a little deeper, though, and you come to see why cutting gardens are not ubiquitous.
Even if you have the location — ideally a flat, sunny and well-drained spot in an inconspicuous area — the demands of such a garden are high.
One of the challenges is in excluding deer, groundhogs and rabbits. Another is in raising a sequence of blooms from April to October. Anyone can cut tulips in spring; what are you supposed to do in early August or late September?
I once thought of cutting gardens as a fusty anachronism because they are associated with old private estates with large gardening staffs, but
I’ve grown to like them a lot, even top-drawer versions that still require a lot of effort, planning and resources. Perhaps that’s the appeal.
One of the smartest can be found at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens in Washington, where horticulturist Drew Asbury and a team of gardeners and volunteers devote much of their time to running this floral machine.
Like most cutting gardens, its palette is heavy on the annuals, but there’s a place for all sorts of plants, including biennials, some shrubs (roses), bulbs, even vines such as clematis.
Asbury also grows a fair number of perennials and herbs, mindful that Hillwood’s floral designer, Ami Wilber, favors today’s looser, more natural looks for her arrangements.
To that degree, the garden is molded by her taste. There’s no gladiolus, for example. “I also don’t like super bright colors,” she said. “I like soft, fleshy tones.” Asbury has obliged with such things as the creamy beige dahlia Cafe au Lait and the plum-colored lisianthus Rosanne Brown.
The heart of the garden is about 100 feet wide and long, and marked by the striped effect of more than 20 linear rows of plantings, about a third of them perennials.
Each is 4 feet wide, about 40 feet long, separated by a path of wood chips and marked by netting, strung horizontally a few inches above the ground.
The flower stems grow through the netting’s 6-inch squares, which hold them firm against summer storms. Taller plants such as dahlias require additional