Planning your cut flower garden - Part 1: Influences and inspiration

Planning your cut flower garden

Part 1: Influences and inspiration

Planning

Planning a garden - regardless of its size - helps you look at your garden over the whole year to ensure that there are always flowers or shrubs to pick from. You can start thinking about the best times to plant the bulbs, sow the seeds or introduce trees and shrubs; you can also think about the effect a particular area of the garden will create in the spring and again in the autumn - and throughout the summer. Planning might inspire you to introduce improvements to an existing herbaceous border or a dedicated flower bed.

You also need to take into account how much time and effort you are prepared to invest in your garden. Do you want to sow seeds and create new flower beds, or just enhance the existing garden with a few carefully selected new plants to keep it easy and low-maintenance? We will show you that with a bit of planning you can pick flowers throughout the year and bring them home to enjoy. Even at times when the garden seems bereft of flowers, you can pick a daisy, find some interesting foliage, or even simply cut a sprig from box hedging.

Creating mood boards

Before you start planning your garden, you need to decide what emotional effect you would like your garden to create. You also need to consider whether the flowers you intend to grow for picking are going to be in harmony with the interior aesthetics of your home. Will they complement - or contrast or clash with - the style of your colour schemes and furnishings?

The best way to achieve both the emotional impact outside and the harmony inside is by creating a mood board. If you assemble pictures of the things you love - from art, textiles and flowers to interior designs, china and dresses - you will develop a sense of style and the colour palette that makes you joyful. You will enjoy gardening even more if there is an emotional connection with the mood of your garden.