Growing Flowers for my Floristry
Lockdown number two has given me the opportunity to get back into my garden this November. It is a chance to tidy up, get ready for the winter, and plant out some bulbs and hardy annuals for the spring!
I had a first go at growing my own flowers, for cutting, during the previous lockdown. This has been a very fulfilling experience. It was so good being able to just nip out into my garden and gather some inspiration, whether I was creating an example wedding centrepiece, flowers for a bridal bouquet, or just topping up some flowers for one of my florry workshops.
Out of all the flowers that I grew, Dahlias, Rudbeckia, and Cosmos were my top five, as they were consistently available throughout the season. Oh, and also a carrot variety, more on that later on! This floral arrangement features all of these florals!
A bowl of my favourite flowers from my garden 2020.
Dahlias were always something that I liked, but I had never thought too deeply about them before. However, after having grown a few different varieties this year, I am now a huge fan! I will definitely be investing more time and energy into some new varieties for 2021.
In the height of its season, this Dahlia Tu Tu featured an impressive six blooms in flower all at once! Well I was impressed anyway.
Here is Beccy’s wedding bouquet, a bride who got married back in August. I needed a few additional blooms to complement the Roses whilst keeping to her theme, without having to purchase far too many stems for one bouquet. My garden gave the perfect solution, with these beautiful Dahlia pom poms!.
Dahlia Pom Pom Snowflake in Beccy’s Wedding Bouquet.
Rudbekia is a strong reliable cut flower. They lasted a good couple of weeks in a vase. You could not hope for more. I have used them in the bowl arrangement above; admittedly I removed the petals for this particular design – just call it a florist thing!
Rudbekia Marmalade.
Cosmos is another easy flower to grow, it just kept on giving. I will be trying a new variety next year called Cosmos cup cake, which I am looking forward to.
Cosmos purity, I used these in a styled wedding shoot back in August 2020.
Well I wasn’t expecting this! I noticed the foliage from my carrots were suddenly very tall and going into full bloom! I had a sneaky suspicion that there was not going to be much of a carrot left to harvest from the ground. It had put all of its energies into the flower, which looked very similar to Queen Anne’s Lace. There was hardly any carrot, but on the plus side, I now had some extra cut flowers to use! I found this pretty flower to be another reliable one.
The carrot flower is also edible, although I have not tried it. I would like to grow these carrots as a cut flower again. But whether I can make that happen is a different matter!
Carrot Samurai, the underdog!
Thank you for reading about the start of my journey into growing flowers for cutting. If you have always wanted to grow flowers, suitable for cutting, but have not yet done so, I urge you to give it a go. I am sure you will love it just as much as I have done.
Claire x