Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season two

Designing your cut flower bed: Planning the patch for season two

Season two: Mid-May until Mid-July

In season two, around 50% of your patch will be filled with hardy annuals. Alongside this, you'll also have later flowering biennials such as Sweet Williams.

In other areas of your garden - outside of your cutting patch - you might decide to plant some alliums and some peonies. These shouldn't be grown in your high-intensity patch though, as alliums tend to self-seed quite prolifically, while peonies are low-yield plants, so not worth sowing in your high-intensity bed.

Our season two plants are:

Sweet pea 'Matucana'

Sweet pea 'Emelia Fox'

Sweet pea 'Almost Black'

Sweet pea 'Blue Velvet'

Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens'

Ammi visnaga

Ammi majus

Scabious

Malope

Scabious 'Black Cat'

Snapdragons

These plants are in the ground but will not flower until later on in the season:

Cosmos

Cobaea scandens

Euphorbia Oblongata

Euphorbias often get a bad name because they have a milky sap when cut which can cause irritation to humans. Don't let this put you off though, as their vivid green brings other colours to life and they are really good value plants to grow too, as they can be grown from seed and will flower in the first year.

After trialling 20 varieties of euphorbia, we have discovered that Euphorbia Oblongata is the most prolific of all of the euphorbias and will produce axillary buds if cut in the right way.

Always wear gloves when picking euphorbias and make sure that you don't touch your eyes. Wearing goggles might be a good idea too.

If you do accidentally get some of the sap in your eye or on your skin, get into the shower and let the water wash it out for a few minutes and you should be fine, though if you have any worsening symptoms then seek medical advice.