Flowers for a Child’s Cutting Garden 

There are several flowers that have worked well in our garden for fresh cut bouquets. When thinking about what worked well I’m considering the following factors:

• What was easy to grow?
• Do the flowers bloom for a long time and do the flowers last well?
• What plants have different heights for layering the space in the garden?
• What different characteristics do the flowers have so that the bouquets have a variety of shape, texture, height, and color?
• Are the flowers attractive and interesting to children?

Zinnias are one of our favorites in the cutting garden because they grow well without a lot of attention, keep blooming over and over again, grow tall, and look beautiful in any bouquet. Zinnias can be cut to have a long or short stem. Snap Dragons are such an elegant looking flower that we enjoyed adding to bouquets last year. When the part of the name “dragon” made our toddler nervous, we nicknamed them “Snappies”, and they became a quick favorite. Marigolds were a nice, colorful short flower for adding in the front of the garden and worked for shorter bouquets. It might be important to note that some people don’t like the smell of marigolds.  Black-eyed Susans made a beautiful, classic-summer addition to the bouquets. Our Salvia was prolific, long lasting and was a tall, thin flower for the fresh cut flower arrangements.

We liked to add some other surprises to the bouquets like the unbloomed flower bud of our hostas and the long, wispy blooming ends of the mint.

Of course there are so many other things we could include and this year we are experimenting with more! We’re adding Poppies, Amaranth, Cosmos, and Bachelor Buttons. What do you think are good flowers for a cutting garden, especially a cutting garden for children?