Who doesn’t like receiving a bouquet?

These days, even grocery stores have displays with globally sourced flowers, seedpods, and ornamental stems. But why not grow your own cut-flower garden? You’ll save money and you only have to step outside to collect whatever you need for a vase or two.

Got Sun?

A little sunny spot along a garage wall, a deck, patio, or in a side yard could be used exclusively as a cut-flower garden. I’d start with annuals, because they typically bloom from June right through the first frost in fall. Zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, carnations, snapdragons, celosia, sweet peas, sunflowers, baby’s breath, tuberose, and marigolds are easy to grow and offer a long season of bloom. 

You can sow seeds directly into the soil in mid-May (after the danger of spring frost has passed) or buy a mixed flat of flowers and transplant them at that time. (Dahlias are sold as tubers or plants, and tuberoses are grown from bulbs.)

Before sowing or planting, work some compost about 3 to 6 inches down into the soil. A water-soluble fertilizer, like Bloom Plus^® or Bloom Booster^®, or any fertilizer with 10-52-10 or 10-54-10 on the label, will help. The high middle number on the label indicates the product promotes flowering. Follow the instructions on the label so that only the correct amount is used. Too much fertilizer can damage the roots.

What’s growing out your windows?

Besides a dedicated area for cut flowers, you may be growing other plants that are suitable. Go foraging for flowers in your garden. Do you have shrub roses? You could float one flower in an elegant bowl of water or in a glass candy dish. Or pick some fragrant viburnum flowers or a colorful hydrangea and pop them into a Ball jar. Visit your vegetable garden for a few stems of kale, Swiss chard, twirling pea stems, or dill foliage. Be creative—think outside the Phlox.

Make the Cut

Once the flowers get going, plan on cutting stems a few times each week. By frequently harvesting the flowers, you’ll encourage annuals (and some perennials) to continue blooming. Get ready to harvest by filling a bucket with an inch or two of warm water and take it outdoors along with shears or pruners. Select flowers that are not quite fully open. Follow the stem down to the height you want in the vase and make the cut. Place the stems in the bucket while you continue cutting.

Shop Your Garden

You don’t need a specific area for a cut-flower garden, either. I “shop” my garden in spring for hellebore flowers, daffodils, tulips, snowdrops and hyacinths, and pop them in small vases for the kitchen, dining room and elsewhere. Later, I clip large heads of allium and may include some iris flowers in the vase if they are open at the same time.

Peonies make for a fragrant display. (Worried about ants coming in on the flowers? Cut them and pop the stems upside down into the bucket of water while outside. Ants will float off the blossoms.) Roses, coneflowers, lavender, black-eyed Susans, fragrant butterfly bush blossoms, fennel leaves and flowers, and Annabelle hydrangeas are just some of the things that can be worked into interesting arrangements.

Don’t have a sunny spot? Forage for foliage in your shade garden. Colorful hosta leaves, along with coleus, ferns and hellebore foliage, make wonderful fillers in arrangements. You can supplement them with store-bought blossoms.

Prepping the Display

Once indoors, fill a sink with a few inches of water and place the stems in it. Use sharp, clean scissors, pruners, or a knife to cut each stem again at an angle while it’s under water. Cutting on an angle increases the surface area for water intake. And, cutting stems under water reduces the chance of air bubbles forming in the stems, which can cause wilting. Gently remove all lower leaves that would otherwise be submerged. (Otherwise, the water becomes smelly.)

It’s easy to prolong the life of a bouquet without using any commercial floral preservative. To keep cut flowers and foliage fresh, place the arrangement in room-temperature water away from sources of heat or air conditioning. If necessary, recut the stems under water in the sink to perk them up. Change the water every day for a long-lasting bouquet. And, when your family or friends ask where you got that beautiful floral arrangement, you can point to the windows.

Nina Koziol is a garden writer and horticulturist who lives and gardens in Palos Park, Illinois