Flower Gardening

Every garden should have a section set aside for flowers so that these are available for cutting - a constant supply of fresh flowers for your house is a fine thing! Our own house usually contains two or three vases of flowers, for perhaps 9-10 months of the year.

If you don't have space to allocate a region of the garden just to flowers for cutting, give some thought to this when planning and planting your garden. You are aiming to have flowers for as much of the year as possible, preferably in colours that match both the surrounding plants and your interior. They should also be accessible - if cutting flowers becomes a major expedition then you will end up not bothering!

The primary goal in flower planting is to mix flowers of different heights, colours, and varieties of flowers, often in an unrestrained fashion, to provide a natural look. It is less common nowadays to find orderly rows of flowering plants except in very formal gardens, and more common to find swathes, groups and clumps of flowers intermingled together. It must look accidental but actually requires careful planning, taking into account the time of year that the plants flower, and their speed of growth and eventual height.

Many people make a springtime trip to the local garden nursery to buy their annual flowering plants. We tend to rely more on perennial plants and flowers, and self-seeding flowers. Many plants are very efficient at spreading themselves about, and after a couple of years the garden effort required to maintain the garden is minimised.

Apart from the initial setup of the flower garden, ongoing maintenance is low. The two main aspects are: fertilising the soil once a year in Spring so that the plants continue to flourish; and dead-heading - removing the dead flowers from the plants. This process can dramatically extend the flowering life of a plant, and also keeps them looking more attractive.

The third part of maintenance is watering. many annual plants especially benefit greatly from substantial watering, especially during the weeks in spring and early summer when they are trying to become established.

For your chosen plants, check the flowering season carefully. That sunflower might only last for two weeks, while the roses could keep coming for months on end. Certain favourites, such as peonies, have a short flowering season but are worth it all the same!