Building a Cutting Garden
A cutting garden is one of the most rewarding things you can grow. Here is how to design, plant, and maintain a patch that produces beautiful flowers from spring to autumn.
A cutting garden is different from an ornamental garden in one key respect: it is designed to be cut from. The plants are grown in rows, not for display in situ, but to provide stems for the house. The aesthetic is productive rather than decorative. And the result, from late spring to the first frosts of autumn, is an extraordinary and continuous supply of fresh flowers for zero cost beyond seed and effort.
Choosing the right site
A cutting garden needs full sun: at least six hours of direct sunlight per day. Most cutting flowers are sun-lovers, and plants grown in shade produce fewer flowers with weaker stems. A sheltered position protects tall flowers from wind damage. Good drainage is essential: most cutting flowers dislike waterlogged soil. A raised bed improves drainage and warms up more quickly in spring, extending the season at both ends.
The essential cutting garden plants
Planning for succession
The key to a cutting garden that produces flowers from spring to autumn is successional sowing: planting the same variety in batches two to three weeks apart, so that the flowering periods overlap and no gap appears. Cornflowers sown in October, then again in February, then again in April will flower from April to July continuously. Sweet peas sown in October and again in February extend the season by weeks in both directions.
Cutting garden calendar
- October to November: sow cornflowers, sweet peas, ammi majus, and larkspur for spring flowers
- February to March: start dahlias and zinnias indoors; sow hardy annuals outside
- April to May: plant dahlia tubers after last frost; direct sow zinnias and more cornflowers
- May to June: the garden starts producing: sweet peas, early cornflowers, alliums
- July to September: peak production from dahlias, zinnias, rudbeckia, and late sweet peas
- September to October: protect dahlias from early frosts or lift and store for winter
“A cutting garden is a constant negotiation between what you have grown and what you need indoors. The generosity it produces is one of the finest things about gardening.”
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