Growing A Bouquet Garden

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “Earth laughs in flowers,” and there is no better way to bring the joy and beauty of Earth’s laughter into your home than with a beautiful lush bouquet of flowers cut from your own backyard garden. With the right selection and careful planning, raising a garden for cut flowers is simple, and you can enjoy the beauty of your garden inside and out. Here are some tips to get started!

Planning Your Bouquet Garden

A little planning goes a long way when considering flowers for your garden. With these tips in mind you can ensure that your garden is structured to create the perfect bouquets.

1. Plant something easy
Choose varieties of flowers that are resistant to disease and pests, and tolerate drought well. Check what grows in your hardiness zone to be sure of success. Zinnias are a great choice, and yield many blooms.

2. Pick tall stems for bouquets
Flowers with long stems and relatively lightweight blossoms are ideal for cut flower arrangements as they will group together nicely into a bouquet. Some of our favorite varieties in our zone include Cosmos, Dahlias, and Sunflowers!

3. Choose flowers with a extended season
Another reason we love Zinnias and Cosmos especially is their staying power. In our zone, these impressive flowers produce gorgeous blooms all the way through summer and most of fall. Hydrangeas are another great choice, as they have a long growing season and impressive blooms.

4. Choose long-lasting varieties
Flowers that last up to a week after being harvested are ideal for bouquets to get the most out of your gardening efforts. Look for flowers with stronger stems and lightweight blooms. One great example is the strawflower. Easy to grow and super long lasting, these flowers boast a unique, straw-like texture, and can be easily dried and saved for other decoration!

5. Pinch your flowers
You should take care to remove dead and dying blossoms from your plants, as these draw energy and nutrients away from the thriving blossoms you want to cultivate. Doing this will encourage the plant to produce new buds instead of spending precious nutrients on blossoms near the end of their life cycles.

Arranging Your Bouquets

Once you have a beautiful garden full of flowers, it's time to make arrangements for your home! Arrangements, like art, vary with everyone’s personal taste. There is no wrong way to build an arrangement, but here are some tips we love to take your bouquets to the next level.

1. Include some buds
While this might seem counterintuitive, including some un-opened or partly opened buds in your bouquet can add depth and dynamic aspects to your bouquets. Including buds will also extend the life of your bouquet as they open later than the already mature flowers. 2. Add some greenery
Beautiful bouquets are not all about flowers! Just like it's important to include veggies on your dinner plate, it's important to include greenery in your bouquets. Greenery will offer a backdrop for your blooms, and visual interest that allows the flowers to really stand out in the bouquet. A great way to add greenery is to add herbs! Varieties like Tulsi Basil and Mint are fragrant, beautiful additions.

3. Get creative with the vessel
Vases are of course the standard for holding bouquets, but don’t let tradition hold you back. Try a creative approach and repurpose an unconventional container to hold your bouquets. This will add visual interest to your arrangement! If the shape of your container is a little too wide, you can also hide a smaller vase inside to hold water and flowers. You can even use clear cellophane tape to create a grid across the top of your container, which will hold the arrangement’s shape. As you can see, there are limitless possibilities for planting and harvesting flowers for bouquets. Structuring your garden space with these tips in mind will surely pay off in spades as you fill your home with the beauty and bounty of your garden.