I'm surprised your zinnias are not doing it for you, Kathy! I grew zinnias for the first time last year, and was amazed at their bloom output. I would never be without them now. They are the mainstay of my cutting garden.

The other flower I adore for cutting is chinese asters. I think they are very elegant and they are quite long-lasting.

Other annuals include celosia, ageratum, statice, annual rudbeckias, snapdragons, amaranthus and of course sunflowers.

Perennials that I like for cutting are phlox (I've just decided to plant lots more. This is so wonderfully fragrant in bouquets!), coneflowers, daisies, rudbeckia, heleniums, dahlias, lilies, roses, joepye weed, agastache, and scabiosa. I also use hostas - both the leaves and the flowers - in bouquets.

That's off the top of my head. Hope you get some more good ideas (I'll be watching too, lol!) and one more thing - plant MORE zinnias, lol!

:)
Dee

Crazy Kathy,
For a number of years cut flowers were my main focus in gardening. From my experience I learned that co-coordinating bloom times was key to its success. The garden may be abundant with bloom from the end of June to Mid August but having plentiful cut flowers during the bumper months can be challenging. Of course every good cutting garden will include a good number of annuals but keep in mind many of them wait until the soil really warms up before they start to bloom heavily. For this reason you might want to plant bi-annuals as well (not too late to seed now), nigellia, digitalis, larkspur, sweet william ect., will bloom in the cooler temps of late spring early summer. Perennials, although a short bloom time play an important role in the cutting garden particularly again during those bumper months. Another thing to consider is to coordinate bloom times for color and texture...you might be disappointed if the only plants you have blooming at one time clash horribly or have little distinction between blossom shapes. You may want to start planting some various and distinctive greens. Don't forget that a flower that may be a real show case in your garden may not translate inside your house. There are a million books and lists for cut flowers but one that I would recommend Specialty Cut Flowers by Allen Armitage. kt

Oops - wanted to clarify something in my previous post. When I said the chinese asters were long-lasting, I meant in the vase, once cut. The plants themselves, alas, aren't as much of a bloom-machine as zinnias are, at least not in my garden.

:)
Dee

Ooo, what a good question! I will be reading eagerly for hints. My own favorite for cut flowers is hybrid tea roses. 'Paris d'Yves St. Laurent" is a nice apricot-pink with flowers that last a very long time in the vase... blooms all summer, and survived my no-spray garden.

When designing cutting gardens for your zone I always include a generous amount of three 'filler' plants that are very useful.

1. Green/bronze fennels - The feathery foliage is a wonderful filler which can be used with any blossom color. Easy from seed.

2. Statice (Limonium latififolium) in your choice of colors. Easy from seed. Hang blossoming stems in warm spot upside down to dry. Always have some on hand to fill in skimpy bouquets with texture and color. Annual.

3. Baby's Breath (Gypsophila paniculata Bristol Fairy). Easy from seed. Can't have a cutting garden without growing this. Hang to dry just as the blossoms are opening. Perennial.

My as yet unfulfilled dream is a row of peonies, just for cutting. Big, fat, fragrant pink peonies. That is heaven.

My favorite long-blooming plants for cutting:

Verbena bonariensis (this is an annual here but it always reseeds itself here and there in my garden every year)

Agastache rugosa(white and purple Korean Mint/Hyssop)- these bloom for a long period and there are always plenty of blooms extra to cut for vases

Helianthus (perennial sunflower) - prolific blooms

Cosmos - orange is my favorite

Right now Goldenrod is my favorite thing to put into vases! Here is the vase I picked yesterday:

{{gwi:1089427}}

Ellen, that is gorgeous! What is that strappy grass-like filler? How do you get the stems so long on your cosmos. Or maybe I should ask what kind of cosmos it is. I grow Bright Lights, which I love, but the stems seem kind of short, and the blooms are kind of fragile.

Thanks,
Dee

hi Dee - the filler is just blades of one of our Miscanthus grasses. The cosmos is Bright Lights, or at least it is from seeds collected from Bright Lights many years ago that I grow every year. I find that it grows best in a rich soil which is not what most Cosmos like. Mine is mostly growing in a bed made up of LOTS of compost and it grows like crazy!!

Hmm, so it IS Bright Lights, huh? Funny. I really love this cosmos in the garden, and I try to cut it for my bouquets, but like I said my stems, on average, are not as long as what appear in your photo, and the blooms seem very fragile. They don't last very long, or if you sneeze or something like that, lol, they fall apart! I guess I need to just keep cutting more and replacing them in the vase!

Also, where do you find your agastache rupestris? I grow a. Honey Bee Blue, which I use in bouquets, but I like the look of your agastache. I did an admittedly very quick and superficial search for a. rupestris, and everything I found showed a flower with a pinkish/purplish bloom, not quite like yours, and I also didn's see white at all. I'll have to search more thoroughly.

Thanks again for sharing this beauty. It really is just gorgeous!

:)
Dee

Kathy I don't know if you've been buying your annuals or not. Many of the annuals sold at garden centers etc. are the shorter varieties suitable for containers. You'll have to grow your own to get the taller versions. At least this is what I've found. Many annuals are really easy from seed and by growing your own you can make sure they'll be tall enough for cutting with significant cost savings.

Some ideas:

Early Summer:
Forget Me Nots
Astilbe - flower plums are great in bouquets

Summer:
Ageratum,
Celosia
Marigolds (taller ones),
Statice,
Pentas (again taller ones),
Cosmos (Sensation Mix has pink shades),
Zinnia 'Lilliput mix' with smaller zinnia flowers
Helianthus (perennial)

Late Summer:
Gladiolus are super easy from corms planted in early summer. In the garden they are not much to look at but in a vase they are great.
Lilies - Stargazer, Mona Lisa (even with the lily beetle these make fantastic bouquets).

Fall:
Snapdragons really like the cool weather and flower much more than the heat of the summer.
Sunflowers (There are shorter, multiple branching ones that are suitable for cut flower arrangements).

Here is a bouquet from last year:

Ellen and Sedum, love the pictures!

Dee - my Agastache is A. rugosa, not rupestris. Korean Mint is the common name. I grew it from seeds I bought from Johnny's about 5 years ago...it is a heavy reseeder but I let it grow in a well draining area next to our driveway and it is very happy there. I think I bought the white variety of rugosa quite a few years ago but it also happily reseeds so I'll probably always have it :-)

re: the Cosmos. I snip off the stems very low, so that there is one long stem plus lots of flowering offshoots attached to it. It keeps sturdier in a vase. I grow LOTS of orange cosmos just so I don't have to be stingy when I cut them! The butterflies love 'em too...

Wow! I am so happy I discovered this site! You are all so helpful. I have made my lists for next year for both seeds (I'm thinking of trying the winter sowing method) and plants. I'm also trying to sketch out where I'm putting the new and moving the old. As a new gardener - I did the "buy one or two of everything" planting style, but I now know - from this site and from studying the neighborhood gardens - that you have to group the similar for impact - and you need more than one or plants of type if you want it for cutting (my mistake with the zinnias, agastache, dahilias, etc. - I hate to steal the blooms from my gardens so I just need more and more of everything I guess :)
AND you all must have brought me luck (or the ground warmed up enough) as my zinnias, sunflowers and dahlias have really been producing the blooms this week. My Cannas and crocosmisia have finally taken off as well - they seem late this year.
Can't wait for my relatively new gardens to become as established as yours! Some day I'll get there!
Thanks - and keep the advice coming! Love the pics!
Kathy

Oh yes, Kathy, definitely try winter-sowing! I started five years ago and it's amazing what it has done for my garden. I never had luck with seeds before that and had given up on starting anything from seed. Then I discovered winter-sowing, and I WS about 200 containers each year.

Ellen, I feel like such a dope, lol! Duh! I don't know how I got rupestris out of your post - I read it twice and still saw rupestris! I couldn't believe when I just went back and actually saw "rugosa". Oh well, at least now I should be able to find some seeds, lol. And thanks for that info on the cosmos.

:)
Dee

Lovely bouqets!

Okay, what's the secret to super easy gladiolas? I try them every couple of years and I don't get any flowers. Heck, I'm lucky if I get the greenery!

My favorite for spring is the old standby - iris. Although each bloom doesn't last long, there are several on the stalk so at least one is always open. I interplant irisis with other perennials so when the foliage gets yucky looking, it is covered up by other flowers and foliage.

Beautiful!

I'm insanely jealous of anyone who can create a beautiful flower arrangement like the ones in these photos. My flowers are lucky if they make it into a vase, in a clump in whatever way they were picked.

If there are flowers in a vase in my house, it is usually all of one kind and it usually means that I removed an overcrowded volunteer - rudbeckia or coreopsis - in full bloom. Those are my longest blooming perennials, and would be great in a cutting garden.

Bogie here is how I grew gladiolus:

-I started with good quality bulbs from Old House Gardens (OHG). I would be wary of glad corms sold by discount and box stores as they are often not stored properly (too hot/too cold/rained on...) Or the bulbs are smaller in size. I know the prices seem high at OHG but they guarantee their stuff. Other places to try: Brent and Beckys bulbs which are more economical. Or even garden nurseries may be a better option than the discount stores (at least I'd like to think they are stored better!)

-Soak the bulbs for 30 mins to 1 hr before planting. Key is to plant when the garden soil is warm when you'd plant tomatoes. I put mine in June over 3 weeks. Make sure the soil is not too wet or the corms will rot. Add Osmocote or other slow release fertilizer to the soil at planting time. Glads like sunny well drained soil. Plant some each week over 3 week period to stagger the blooms.

-One trick to get them to come up faster is to dig the hole to 6 inches but only fill 3 inches of soil. Once the corms come up you can gently fill in the remaining soil. Plant in groups of 5 or 7 for ease of planting.

-In fall they are easy to save. Just wait until first frost and dig them up 1 week later. Store them in loose fitting bags such as onion bags in an unheated basement.

Hope this helps.
Sue

Thanks Sue! I was hoping someone would answer bogie's quesetion. I tried gladiola this year for the first time, but it was a bust. But I knew it might be - it was an impulse buy at HD, and I knew buying those bulbs would be a risk. I have one bulb out of 24 that grew!

But I already have an order in for next year for some better-quality corms, so I am hoping for better results.

:)
Dee