My first cut flower garden was rows after rows of zinnias that, welp, I never ended up cutting. I saw a neighbor plant zinnia in their vegetable garden and wanted to do something similar. I used a large bag of zinnias with fertilizer from Tractor Supply. Besides hoeing rows for this zinnia mix, I did not have a plan for my first cut flower garden.
Fast forward a few years, I wanted a flower garden with lilies, peonies, marigolds, zinnias, and more to “sell”. I sold a few gladiolas and dahlias at my mom’s farm, but it was there to have flowers. But from this garden came the weeds . . . My plants were spaced in a single row, only a few inches from each other. The plants ended up being short and the blooms were not luscious. By August of that year, I began planning that space for the following year, creating mini-fields of flowers.
Where to Put Your Annual Cut Flower Garden?
I plan to have my cut flower garden in the same large garden space as my vegetable garden. It has one large fence and one large gated opening.
The garden should not be planted in any low spots in the yard, and should not include any dips or low spots in the yard. Our current garden space includes a low spot in the north end of the garden, near the top of our plateaued hill. In heavy rain, it creates a river through our garden. We need to do work to exclude it from our garden space to hopefully resolve our drainage problem.
The space should be in a sunny location for majority of the daylight hours.
Walkways in the Cut Flower Garden
Trying to save on space before, I would only keep walkways about 1’ to 1’6”. It was a tight fit whenever everything began blooming. Even when keeping the walkways at a small width, weeds still flooded my pathways.
The best width to plan for my cut flower garden is 2’. 3’ is okay too, but that is an extra 1’ that will need some weed prevention. A good way to pick the size of walkway that will work best for you is to think of the size of doors.
Some interior doors are only 2’ wide. Think of some small apartment bathrooms or closets that have a smaller door that you are able to walk through, but not really comfortably. For a garden, this will be big enough to walk through, saving garden space.
Normal interior doors are 2’6” wide. They are comfortable to walk through daily, but are bit tight when moving in beds or chairs. This width would provide some extra room between the mini-flower fields, which would be nice for kneeling or sitting down between the rows while working.
Exterior doors and some interior doors are 3’ wide. They are easy to walk through daily and easier to bring items through. Having this spacing in a flower garden would allow a spacious amount between flower beds.
Cut Flower Beds
I don’t visualize these as just rows. They essentially take five or six rows into one mini-field. It is a flower bed for cut flowers. This allows the flowers to be planted closer together while still having plenty of space to grow healthily.
My plan for my cut flower garden beds are 4’ wide and 24’ long. You can make these shorter with paths in between. You can also make them longer as well. The flower beds can also be 3’ wide. I’ve tried both widths before. It was less intimidating when harvesting the stems with the 3’ wise flower bed. It was so much easier to reach everything.
4’ wide beds enabled me to plant more crops in one area. It is entirely possible to reach to the center for planting and harvesting, and is not that much a stretch.
Which Direction Should Garden Beds Go?
One option is to plan the cut flower garden beds go east to west. This is a great way to put the tall sunflowers in the back along the north side while providing daylight from the south to the shorter plants. The medium sized plants would be next, such as the zinnias, cosmos, and marigolds, still allowing the sunlight to reach the shorter plants in the front along the south side. These would include Sweet William, lisianthus, and phlox.
The second option to have the beds run north to south. This is not my favorite, but it is possible to still keep the tall plants along the north side and the short plants on the south side.
Sometimes it really depends on the shape of the hills. At my first home with my husband, our garden had the rows run north to south, but enough sunlight was reaching all my plants. We had the larger tomatoes on the north side and the strawberries on the south side. The hill was higher on the west side and shorter on the east side. It was easier to create rows and double rows based on the contour of the land versus how the sunlight hit the plants.
At our homestead now, we have a slight elevation change from north to south, either way would work for us, as long as we keep the tall plants to the north and the short plants to the south.
Planning Flower Plant Spacing
Some plants take 6”, 8”, 9” or 12” spacing. I keep to just use two of this spacing the 8”, which allows for 6 rows in a 4’ wide bed, and 9” that allows for 5 rows in a 4’ wide bed. 8” is great for some smaller plants that don’t need as much room, such as snapdragons and Sweet William. 9” is awesome for larger plants that spread out such as zinnias, marigolds, and cosmos.
Dahlias take between 12” and 18” spacing. In a 3’ wide bed the plants can be in two rows 18” from each other while they are 12” away from each other within their one row.
Gladiolas can be planted 6” to 8” apart. Some dig a trench to plant, but I drill holes using an auger, so I do prefer using the 8” spacing where there are 6 rows in one bed.
Sunflower spacing varies. For branching sunflowers, provide 18” to 24” spacing.; for single stem varieties, it depends how large of heads you want; for larger heads, use 9” spacing; for smaller heads, use 4-6” spacing.
How to Plan for Weed Prevention in the Garden
The best way to plan to beat the weeds in the cut flower garden is to gain a head start on them. No, not by hoeing the walkways and around the plants. Use Sunbelt Landscape Fabric to suppress any weeds from growing.
It does take burning holes into the landscape fabric, which takes time and the use of a propane torch, but it suppresses the majority of the weeds.
I do end up having weeds sneak up through the holes designated for my plants. It does still time to weed out those buggers, but it is so much less time and they do pull out more easily than if I had nothing there!
Using straw, leaves, or other mulches work as well, but I reserve using these for specific plants and perennials. It takes more manual work to bring in bags of mulch into the garden to spread out, as well as considering the yearly cost of buying mulch, or even straw.
Sunbelt Landscape Fabric is reusable year after year, as well as being lightweight. Being lightweight, it needs to be held down by landscape staples or heavy objects, such as cap blocks from an old foundation.
Planning on Grid Paper
Even compared to some online programs, I find the best tool to plan for a cut flower garden is the use of grid paper. When students in FFA compete in a landscape design project, they have their beautiful garden displays, along with a sketch of their layout on grid paper.
Treat each block on the grid paper as either 2 square feet or 1 square foot. With having a rather large garden, I use the 2 square foot measurement to include my whole garden on a sheet of paper. This is most helpful when seeing the overall layout of the garden. Specific designs to specific parts of the garden, I do use the 1 square foot measurement. It is nice to have an enlargement copy of it too.
Use a pencil versus a pen or marker. The latter may be bolder, but pencil can be erased. When making decisions and changing one’s mind multiple times, a writing utensil that can erase nicely is absolutely necessary.
Spring Annual Cut Flowers
Being in the habit of planting annuals after my average last frost date, I never realized that I can plant a whole 6 to 8 weeks early with some cool hardy annual flowers.
Thanks to Lisa Mason Ziegler from Virginia and her book “Cool Flowers,” I was able to decide what cut flowers to plant out in the first week of April. This is when my daffodils are in bloom. The weather at this time is warm enough, but still has light frosts every now and then. Hardy annuals can survive these light frosts, but they should be covered if a hard freeze is expected.
We usually have some snow fall in April, just a light layering. The snow won’t hurt the hardy annual flowers, but if the temperatures reach below 28°F for over a few hours, there would be trouble.
Spring Cut Flower Garden Design
These flower will have a separate garden space outside of the main garden. I didn’t originally plan for this, but after seeing how many cool flowers I wanted to grow and knowing I wanted to see if they would come back the following year, whether by being hardy enough, or by reseeding, I needed a space that would not need to be rototilled.
I don’t plan to use landscape fabric with these hardy annual flowers. My reasoning behind that for the 2023 growing season is because I want to save the seeds and replant, as well as seeing if any of these flowers will come back on their own, whether by being perennial or by dropping their own seeds.
Some flowers can be direct seeded. In a prepped garden bed, seeds can be scattered across the soil if they are to be surfaced sown. Other seeds will need to be planted according to their required depth. Plant these by hand 8 to 9 inches apart, or their required spacing. Sweet peas are 2 inches apart, and can be planted using a single-row seeder. Examples of these flowers include, sweet peas, poppies, cornflowers, orlaya, and other cut flowers that may not have germinated well indoors under grow lights.
Other spring flowers can be started indoors under grow lights and planted out 6 to 8 weeks before the average last frost date. Examples of these flowers that I’m starting from seed to transplant in mid-spring include buplerum, rudbeckia, larkspur, snapdragon, strawflower, phlox, feverfew, love-in-a-mist, dianthus, and calendula.
For more information on each variety, access the Grower’s Library on Johnny’s Select Seed website, or Lisa Mason Ziegler’s book “Cool Flowers”.
Summer Annual Cut Flowers
Keeping an eye on the weather for any predicted frosts around my average last frost date, I’ll begin to plant out my cut flowers that prefer the warmer weather.
This is the intense time for planting, because now essentially everything can be planted. Start with transplants that have run out of room in their cells. Then work on direct seeding flowers. And lastly, finish with any transplants.
Summer Cut Flower Garden Design
This summer garden will be a part of my main garden space. I’m not expanding the space for cut flowers, but I am managing the space better to hold more germinated flowers. Too much space the previous season was wasted with flowers that didn’t germinate being direct sown.
With all these flowers, 6’ wide landscape fabric burnt to be 24’ long will be used as weed prevention. Larger space flowers will be in the fabric burnt with 5 rows, 9” apart, such as zinnias, marigolds, and cosmos. Medium space flowers will be in 6 rows per bed, 8” apart, such as snapdragons, lisianthus, and rudbeckia.
Sunflowers will have their own garden space where a row or two is planted every week or every other week. Branching sunflowers will not be planted in landscape fabric this year, similar to the single stem. All sunflowers will follow a succession planting to have these blooms throughout the summer and fall seasons.
Most of my summer flowers will be started indoors underneath grow lights, but some others will be direct seeded into the soil. Examples of my direct sown flowers are zinnias, sunflowers, some marigolds, and some cosmos. Everything else is started indoors.
Designing on Paper
First, outline your garden space. Mark or know your north-south-east-west on the paper.
Draw you bedding space. Add what flowers you plan on adding. Make a note of the spacing it needs, as well as what type of mulching you plan to use for that specific bed.
Be Intentional when Planning Cut Flower Garden
Just know that this is your first sketch of mapping your garden space. When planting everything, you may change your mind while working in the garden. New ideas come that just inspire you to do something different, and better, than what you originally planned. And go with that. As long as you think it through and it is intentional.
For example, we rototilled a new spot for the poppies and the sweet peas. The sweet peas are not where I originally intended them to be. They’re on the opposite end. I will also need to add another sweet pea row later on. All other beds will be pushed to the right on my original design. I am still being intentional with what I am planting and where.
An example of what is not intentional is buying extra seed or extra plants impulsively and not having the space to put the new flowers. I’ve done this. I’m guilty. Clearance plants are my weak point with gardening, especially with flowers. Those buy are never intended for. I didn’t need lavender or perennial rudbeckia, nor was I ready for those plants last summer, but I liked the idea of trying them, but I didn’t try them with intention.
The whole goal with creating a garden plan for annual cut flowers is to focus on being intentional with your garden space, budget, seeds, plants, and time. Roll with it, but still have a plan in mind.
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