Sarah Raven's Expert Guide to Growing Cut Flowers for Your Home
If you adore cut flowers, now is the perfect time to sow seeds for a burst of colour indoors later in the year. But with so many plants available, choosing the right ones can be overwhelming. How much space do you have? How long will the blooms last? Favourites like peonies may be stunning but often flower briefly in the garden, whereas options like cosmos and dahlias offer longer displays.
Alternatively, you might enjoy picking fragrant sweet peas all summer for intense, albeit short-lived, indoor arrangements that require regular refreshing. To simplify the process, award-winning broadcaster, author, and cook Sarah Raven, who operates a gardening mail-order business and hosts courses at her Perch Hill home in East Sussex, has narrowed down the best choices.
"On the whole, go for annuals because they give you 10 times the productivity," she advises. "And go for cut-and-come again annuals, particularly in a smaller garden." For combinations, Raven recommends: "I would go for two or three foliage and three flowers for a solid display." Her latest book, A Year Of Cut Flowers, provides extensive ideas and advice on growing and arranging cut flowers.
Top 5 Favourite Cut Flowers by Sarah Raven
- Euphorbia oblongata: "People do worry about euphorbias because you have to pick them with gloves on, but it's like the perfect plateau-former, which means that you can slot things in. It's almost like organic oasis because it just holds everything else in place and is incredibly easy to grow. It's a short-lived perennial which flowers about nine months of the year if you keep picking it." Note that euphorbia grows back slowly, so for containers, consider swapping it with cerinthe (honeywort) for more prolific growth.
- Salvia viridis (blue-flowered): "This is very long-flowering, from May until September. It self-seeds but not too much, with beautiful blue bracts which are very long-lasting in a vase. It's a perfect spike. So the euphorbia is a plateau-former for the salvia."
- Snapdragon (antirrhinum): Raven's favourite is 'Liberty Crimson', which is extremely long-flowering with a great vase life. "It's very easy to grow and very healthy." Snapdragons thrive in sunny or partially shaded borders, pots, and containers.
- Zinnia: She suggests 'Queeny Red Lime', transitioning from lime to muted pink. Sow under cover in April or directly in late May, as they dislike cold nights. Flowering from July to October, zinnias prefer dry, sunny spots with good drainage and do well in pots, attracting pollinators.
- Cosmos: Raven favours Cosmos bipinnatus 'Rubenza', a dark, rich, shorter variety that is easy to grow, prolific, and long-flowering. "They give you the highest square foot productivity of any cut flower," meaning more blooms per space. Sow in March or April under cover or directly in May, staking taller varieties and deadheading regularly.
How to Cut Garden Flowers Effectively
"Always pick into a bucket rather than a basket, so they're cut straight into water, and strip two thirds of the leaves into a second bucket which can go straight on to the compost heap," Raven advises. Avoid cutting stems to the ground. Instead, "Work out what vase you are going to put them in and then cut to that length. You can cut deep into the plant but always cut above a pair of leaves so you then get auxiliary bud formation, so the flowers are replaced very quickly." With cut-and-come-again plants, they will regrow if handled properly.
Best Time to Cut Flowers
Cut flowers first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Plants photosynthesise and transpire during the day, becoming water-depleted, especially on hot days when cells go floppy. "As it cools down into the evening they also get back into a more positive water balance – but the best time to cut is first thing in the morning."
Making Flowers Last Longer in a Vase
"When you bring them in and they've been in water, sear the stem end in boiling water for about 10 seconds, depending on the texture of the stem," Raven says. For woody stems like roses, use 20 seconds; for soft stems like bluebells, 5 seconds; for average stems, 10 seconds. Place 10% of the stem in boiling water, then into cold water. To reduce bacterial growth, add an acidifying agent like clear vinegar. "Change the water every two to three days and cut the stems again, so you don't get that slime forming and re-apply the vinegar."
Creating an Attractive Floral Display
Use an uneven number of the same bloom, such as five or seven cosmos, followed by uneven numbers of other flowers. "When I'm making a picking list, I would always do odd numbers. Flowers should be between two and three times the height of the vase for a more natural look."
A Year Of Cut Flowers by Sarah Raven is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £30, with photographs by Jonathan Buckley, and is available now.
