One of the leading horticultural newsletters has just announced the next \u201cbig thing\u201d in home gardening–the cutting garden.\u00a0 It is now clear that vegetable gardeners, who have gotten used to being considered cutting edge, will have to step aside in favor of those who are actually cutting flowers.\u00a0 The wheel of fashion simply never stops turning.<\/p>\n
Strictly speaking, a cutting garden is a bed or series of beds for the cultivation of flowering plants that will be cut and used for indoor display.\u00a0 Wealthy households in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries maintained cutting gardens so that floral displays elsewhere on properties would not be depleted when blooms were needed for arrangements.\u00a0 Annuals traditionally dominated cutting gardens, though flowering perennials, shrubs and roses were also used. \u00a0Then and now, the focus is on sequencing bloom times so something is always available for cutting.<\/p>\n
Modern gardeners can see the advantages and disadvantages of such an idea.\u00a0 The advantages are obvious, but the problem is that most of us these days do not have enough room for a dedicated cutting garden.\u00a0 In the growing season we make our bouquets by snipping a few flowers here and a few flowers there, being careful not to create too many blank spots in our planting schemes.\u00a0 Of course, those with extra pocket money simply don\u2019t cut anything from the garden, indulging instead in stems from the supermarket or garden center.\u00a0 No guilt should come into play if you make such choices, because in the end, it is the flowers that count.<\/p>\n
I saw a beautiful cutting garden a few years ago when I visited sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens\u2019 home and garden in Cornish, New Hampshire.\u00a0 It was mid summer and the garden was full of all kinds of flowers, but I especially remember the salpiglossis or painted tongue, favored by Victorian gardeners for its stained glass colors.<\/p>\n
The Golden Age of American Gardens, <\/em>a gorgeous book by Mac Griswold and Eleanor Heller, features a 1921 pastel drawing of photography titan George Eastman\u2019s extravagant and highly ornamental cutting garden in Rochester, New York.\u00a0 The layout, which looks about as long as a football field, is accented by clipped evergreens and large ornamental urns.\u00a0 Clearly it is not something easily duplicated today unless you have ascended to the One Percent.<\/p>\n So\u2026What do you do if the Power Ball Lottery has passed you by and One Percent status exists only in your dreams?\u00a0 There are still ways to jump on the cutting garden bandwagon, even if your space is limited.<\/p>\n If you have a vegetable garden, border it with cutting flowers, or set aside one quadrant for the purpose.\u00a0 Several vegetable gardeners of my acquaintance have found that they really only want to grow a few favorite or hard to find vegetables.\u00a0 Planting \u201ccut and come again\u201d annuals in the vacant vegetable spaces is a perfect way to add beauty to the kitchen garden and attract pollinating insects.<\/p>\n If your garden consists of containers, you can establish several large pots for growing cutting flowers.\u00a0 Position these behind other containers so that when you cut blooms it won\u2019t spoil the show.\u00a0 If you use decorative containers, plant different varieties of cutting flowers in plastic \u201cliner\u201d pots that can be dropped into the larger decorative containers when your cutting flowers are in bloom and removed while the plants set new buds.<\/p>\n If you have a cottage-type garden with many different annuals, perennials, shrubs and small trees, you already have the makings of a cutting garden.\u00a0 When you think about next spring\u2019s plantings, focus a bit more on great annuals like zinnias, marigolds, snapdragons, larkspur, annual poppies, stocks, sunflowers and other long-stemmed traditional favorites.\u00a0 If you can, plant them in swathes, large clumps or ribbons, so that you end up with a sizeable number of a single variety in one area.\u00a0 Most annuals love to be cut and will produce more flowers in response.\u00a0 They are also easy to grow, only requiring regular water, periodic feeding with balanced plant food and deadheading.\u00a0 Of course, if you are cutting blooms for the house, deadheading isn\u2019t even necessary.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget flashy greens for stunning bouquets.\u00a0 In my opinion, the best plants for that purpose are annual coleus, now known botanically as solenostemon.\u00a0 Plant some chartreuse or purple-leaved varieties and variegated types according to your taste and available square footage.\u00a0 Coleus must be trimmed regularly to keep them bushy and tidy, so they are perfect for the cutting garden.<\/p>\n The leaves have all fallen; now the garden catalogs will begin to land on doorsteps and online vendors will put up their spring offerings.\u00a0 Be fashion forward and plan your own kind of cutting garden.\u00a0 You can even grow flowers for cutting in \u201cgrow bags\u201d hung on a sunny wall.\u00a0 You may never be George Eastman, but you can still share pictures of your cutting garden\u2014however you conceive it\u2014on Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the leading horticultural newsletters has just announced the next \u201cbig thing\u201d in home gardening–the cutting garden.\u00a0 It is now clear that vegetable gardeners, who have gotten used to being considered cutting edge, will have to step aside in favor of those who are actually cutting flowers.\u00a0 The wheel of fashion simply never stops … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[478],"class_list":["post-702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-cutting-gardens-garden-fads-cottage-gardens-st-gaudens-george-eastman-annuals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}