To Grow Cut Flowers Without Sacrificing Your Garden’s Beauty, Think Like a Florist

So you want to have a beautiful garden, with flowers intermixed in borders along with trees, vegetables and herbs. But you love cutting flowers and making floral arrangements for others, and for your home, too. Is that you? I understand, because it’s me, too. Both as a professional floral designer, and as a gardener. For years I just wasn’t quite sure how to have both without sacrificing the beauty of the garden, or the quality and quantity of my floral designs.

What has helped me the most has been changing my perspective: instead of planning my garden and then hoping it would provide what I needed for floral designs, I’ve taken what I know about floral design and used that to help me redesign my gardens. This new approach has ensured I have enough flowers and foliage of enough different kinds, to cut for floral arrangements without jeopardizing the beauty or health of the garden.

What You Need When Floral Designing

Flowers not only come in a huge array of shapes, sizes, heights (and of course color,) they also have their own personalities: they cluster or lean, are sword-straight, swoop or pop. Each has a role to play in flower arranging, and having a wide variety of options to choose from will only make your designs more creative and alive.  But flowers can be categorized into a few basic shapes/styles that will make choosing the plants for your garden that little bit easier.

Line Flowers

Long-stemmed flowers such as Eremurus, delphinium and gladiolus, for example, can make graphic, standout floral arrangements, especially for those against a wall and viewed from the side, like, for example, in an entry or on top of a sideboard.  Because they are relatively straight they can at times look at odds in a more loose or romantic arrangement, but become striking when used en masse.  –In the garden long, blossom-stemmed flowers give needed vertical interest and are a wonderful complement to shorter, bushier flowers that help hide their fading foliage, as well as airy, frothy flowers. Often called “line” flowers, other tall, less ramrod-straight flowers that create needed height, reach, drama and structure for an arrangement (and in the garden) are Bells of Ireland, flowering tree branches, and Larkspur. These are but a few of the line-shaped flowers and foliage available to you. When you next visit the nursery, go with a keen eye for shape: If you have long and linear in your mind’s eye, the plants with that shape will jump out at you.

Focal Flowers

These flowers are your stars: the ones that you want to be seen, and framed, for certain. Some examples of  focal flowers are the rose, dahlia, peony, anemone, ranunculus, lisianthus, and lily. In general (although not entirely) these flowers tend to be round in shape. These are the blooms your eye will be drawn to in an arrangement and the ones you will base many of your other flower and foliage decisions upon.  Our gardens tend to be full of focal flowers, but we can often “run out” of these important blooms if we forget to pay attention to when they bloom: many, such as daffodil, anemone, peony and ranunculus, bloom in spring. Others, such as dahlia and many roses, bloom in mid-to-late summer. Choosing focal flowers that bloom in what is often a bloom lull between spring and summer (ie., Astilbe, Salvia, Poppies,) as well as those that take the stage in Fall (think Dahlia, Chrysanthemum, Sunflower, Zinnia) and winter (Hellebores, Witch Hazel, Snow Drop, Winter Jasmine, Cyclamen) is both an important aspect to designing an always-active and blooming garden, and having focal flowers from which to harvest for your floral arrangements in every season.

Filler Flowers

In the garden, these are the flowers that hide stems, cover gaps, fill out your garden and add movement and airiness. This is exactly what they do in the vase as well.  Excellent filler flowers and foliage are Stock, Euphorbia, Snapdragon, Chamomile, Forget-me-Not, Queen Anne’s Lace, Orlaya, Phlox and Statice. There are ever so many more, and in the garden filler flowers—especially when planted in drifts-- can often steal the show. At a minimum they provide transitions and act as a softener between plants, helping blend colors and blur harsh plant lines—pretty much exactly what they’ll do in your floral arrangements, too.

Don’t Forget the Foliage

The final component of your floral arrangements—and your garden—are foliage. The variety of textures, shapes, colors and form of foliage in both the garden and in the vase cannot be underestimated. Some arrangements—particularly those of modern design—are flower-only. But the vast majority of arrangements (and as all plants have stems and leaves, the default in your garden) contain foliage. It’s the fourth, very important floral design element.  Not all foliage lasts in the vase, however, and some need special treatment in order to do so. As a general rule, foliage from trees and woody shrubs needs not only a slanted cut at the base of the stem (or branch), but also a few vertical snips up the stem, to split it and expose the interior, to allow for better water uptake. Very thin-leaved and stemmed plants may go limp and flop in the vase, and very thick or waxy-leaved plants like rhododendron or camellia may overwhelm many arrangements with their larger size and rigidity. The best thing to do? Look for plants with a wide variety of leaf shapes; look for uniquely-colored stems, like red or maroon, and for those plants which not only have beautiful leaves, but also compelling buds or seedheads—both of which can add wonderful texture to an arrangement.  Another aspect of foliage often overlooked is scent: in an arrangement and in a garden, this can be everything!  Some beautiful foliage with scent that is great in both garden and arrangements:  scented geranium, lemon balm, mint, oregano, rosemary, lemon verbena. Although many plants with beautiful flowers have foliage which can work in the vase, too, don’t limit yourself: try mixing branches and the stems of shrubs and other perennials with your flowers from other plants.  When you choose foliage with a mix of colors, shapes, sizes and form, you’ll add a critical structural element to both garden and vase.

There are many things to take into consideration when choosing the plants for your garden: climate, water, light, soil, use, need, companion-planting, and more. We’ll talk about each of these in many of the blogs on this site.  But when it comes to choosing annual and perennial flowers that work both in the garden as a whole, and for cut flowers, keeping these elements of floral design in mind can be a helpful additional tool in your decision-making.

By keeping the floral design categories of line (long), focal and filler flowers, as well as diverse foliage, at top of mind when you’re making your plant buying or growing choices, you’ll go a long way toward creating a garden that has the diversity needed to support regular harvesting for your floral arrangements. When planning your flower garden, think like a florist!