Cut Flower Growing

It’s that time of year when spring is well and truly in the air and we’re looking forward to long summer days spent in the garden. This is undoubtedly also the time when we all look into our gardens/yards/pots and think about growing something lovely to enjoy.

Even if you’re not looking to necessarily grow for your own weddings and deliveries, its still such a lovely and worthwhile activity which will give you peace, slowness and something lovely to look at every day throughout the growing season. One of the best things about growing your own flowers is always having some to hand for when you want to take photos, have a little play with a new idea or technique or even make yourself a little table arrangement for a special occasion. They are a wonderful addition to your styling toolbox, they are fun and easy to grow and they are also an exercise in mindfulness that we probably all need right now.

Marianne from Frances and Rose has been growing cut flowers for her floristry business for many years and she is sharing her top 6 cut flower seeds for beginners. If you’ve been thinking about adding more British flowers to your work this is the perfect place to start, get inspired and simply begin! Like the saying goes, you’ve got to start somewhere… so why not get going with something simple.

Over to Marianne...

Cornflower

One of the easiest flowers to grow by far, they come in lots of different colours and so are very versatile. Varieties include: Black Ball, Blue Boy, Velvet Dawn, White. These seeds can be sown directly outside into freshly turned soil or new compost after the frost has passed. They make for a great pop of colour in arrangements as well as being great in buttonholes.

Ammi

This beautiful annual produces gorgeous frothy clouds of white and is a wonderful alternative to gypsophila for a more authentic English country garden feel in arrangements. This flower comes in two main varieties, Ammi Majus and Ammi Visnaga - the former having flatter heads with a lacier pattern, the latter larger ‘mop’ type heads. Both are fantastic in cut flower arranging, with brilliant vase life and prolific flowering when deadheaded/harvested properly. You can sow these seeds inside to germinate (see your particular packet for most accurate instructions) and then plant out later in the season when they have grown stronger and you should see beautiful flowers right through to early autumn.

Calendula

Calendula is one of my favourites, a true unsung hero in the cut flower world in my eyes. Maybe its their common name of ‘marigolds’ that hasn’t done them any favours or the fact that the popular image of them is fluorescent orange? But with the right varieties I think they are incredibly easy to grow and to fall in love with. My favourite varieties are: Sherbert Fizz, Touch of Red and Sunset Buff - all on the peachy scale rather than halloween orange. These, like the cornflowers, can be sown very successfully outside later in April/early May and will last right through to the first frost in winter. Use them for soft pops of colour in table arrangements or bouquets and make the most of their robust vase life, changing the water regularly when they’re cut will result in long lasting blooms.

Nigella

Also known as ‘love-in-a-mist’, this delicate flower earns its name with its gloriously frothy properties yet without being overly frilly. They are amazingly versatile and are a real thriving flower, hardy and pretty in all stages of life (the seed heads are particularly beautiful). They create a cloud of colour when they appear and each stem will produce multiple delicate flowers which can be used in many different ways. They’re great for flower crowns and buttonholes, especially in their seedhead form, and a bunch of them all gathered together would make a gloriously simple flower girl posy. My favourite varieties are: African Bride, Albion Green Pod and Miss Jekyll.

Cosmos

Bold and blousy, cosmos are a firm favourite in my vase arrangements. Happiest as a cut flower when in water, they do still hold their own in bouquets and their wafty wonder is a beautiful summer sight. There are many varieties that grace my plot, but my personal favourites have to be the simple white Purity and a new discovery of Apricot Lemonade. They will need supporting as they grow tall so staking them with bamboo and string netting is advised, these are your classic ‘cut and come again’, so like others in this list, the more you keep on top of dead-heading and harvesting them, the more flowers you will see appear.

Scabious

I was going to stop at 5 ‘easy to grow flowers’ but I just couldn’t leave scabious off my list! So here is my 6th, easy to grow hero - scabious. Like glorious little flowery pincushions, I find their versatility in floristry is phenomenal. I like to use them to create movement in my work, they act like little pom poms bobbing around when in a bouquet or outside arrangement moving in the breeze. I also find their seed cycle beautiful, and like the Nigella, the seed heads can often be the most stunning iteration of the Scabious flower (the variety Stellata is specifically grown for its seed heads). Before they flower, the young buds look almost like under-ripe green strawberries, and then after losing their petals, their fluffy bobbly seed heads take on a delicate charm as well. I think if you really look at all these annuals, from sowing to going to seed, you can find so much beauty at every stage. I usually grow a lovely selection of tall double mix and Black Knight.

If you'd like to find out more about how to grow your own cut flowers, Marianne has written a book all about getting started! You can purchase this via her website here:

https://www.francesandrose.co.uk/product-page/cut-flower-growing

Already a Freelance Florist member? We also have another guest post from Marianne in our members area so head over and take a look!

Where to buy:

https://www.sarahraven.com/

https://www.suttons.co.uk/

https://www.chilternseeds.co.uk/

https://www.thompson-morgan.com/

British grown flowers available to florists.

If you find you want to use more British grown flowers within your own business it’s a great idea to supplement your own with other local growers. Our Growers directory, available to members, can help connect you.