It’s always nice to receive a gigantic vase of cutflowers, but even better is when those blooms come from your own back yard! Easy to grow and with a good vase life to boot, the following plants will keep you bloomin’ happy all summer long – whether you’re in the garden or your living room.
Yellow sunflowers are bright and cheery, but the red ones add a unique touch to the garden and bouquets.
Photo Credit: Lane Greer
Gladiolus blooms come in a wide range of colors and brighten both garden and home.
Photo Credit: Lane Greer
Gladiolus (Gladiolus). Glads are grown as annuals north of Zone 7. My mother always called this the funeral flower, but the plant has finally outgrown this bleak reputation. Its blooms are great because they come in lots of colors like purple, green, red, orange, white, yellow and many shades of pink and salmon. (And salmon is such a hard color to find for the garden!) The flowers last a long time in the vase if you cut or buy them just as the bottommost buds are starting to open.
For midsummer blooms, gladiolus corms should be planted in spring, just after the first frost-free date. But continue planting corms about every two or three weeks to get flowers all summer long. These plants need full sun and grow 2-3 feet tall. Place them alongside other big plants like Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum × superbum) and Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha).
Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus). What a sunny disposition these flowers have! From Van Gogh’s time to the present, sunflowers have always engendered happy feelings. There are over 100 cultivars of sunflowers that make great cutflowers. Try ‘Teddy Bear’, which has a head full of rich yellow petals on plants that are only a foot tall. Kids also like the humongous heads like those found on ‘Mammoth Grey Stripe’. My favorites are the reds like ‘Red Sun’, ‘Claret’ and ‘Velvet Queen’. It’s easy to find a mix of colors in seed packages. And because they have large seeds, sunflowers are easy for children (and grown-ups) to plant. These beauties just need a sunny spot in the garden, with enough room to accommodate their mature size.
If you cut or buy fresh sunflowers, remove all the leaves except for the topmost ones. Most sunflowers have a longer vase life when floral preservatives are used. For good vase life and nice flowers, cut the stems when the flower petals (or, to be botanically correct, the ray flowers) are at a 90-degree angle. If you cut the stems before this, the flowers won’t open.
Zinnias (Zinnia elegans). These plants are so easy to grow and come in so many colors and sizes. I’m always amazed that more people don’t have them in their gardens!
If you want to grow selections for cutting in your garden, choose some of the taller types, such as the Oklahoma mix (small flowers on 3-foot or longer stems) or the Benary’s Giant mix (sometimes called the Blue Point series, with very large flowers). Both Oklahoma and Benary’s Giant are available in numerous colors, including white, pink, purple, yellow, orange and red. The old favorite ‘Cut and Come Again’ is available in the same range of colors, but the stems are a little shorter, reaching 2 feet. There are other good ones, too, like the green-flowering ‘Envy’ and the crazy striped and speckled ‘Candy Stripe’. Just stay away from zinnias with names like ‘Liliput’ and ‘Thumbelina’ – these smaller selections are best for containers and garden border edges.
Zinnias need full sun and good drainage, but they’re amazingly drought-tolerant. I like to mix all kinds of zinnias together to provide different heights. Or you can mix them with other tall annuals, such as sunflowers and cosmos.
These plants are so easy to grow, anyone can do it. What’s more, they’re as beautiful on your table as they are in your garden. Sure, growing your own saves money, and the flowers will last longer – but best of all, you’ll be able to say, “I grew that!”
