Best Annual Flowers for a Cutting Patch All Summer

A Cutting Patch of Your Own

There is a particular pleasure in walking down the garden at breakfast with a pair of scissors and coming back with a jug of flowers. Nothing in the vegetable plot or the herbaceous border gives quite the same return. But the border is not the place to raid — you want a bed of your own, where you can cut with abandon and no guilt. A cutting patch need not be large: a strip 1.2 metres wide by 2 or 3 metres long, in full sun, out of the worst of the wind, will keep the house in flowers from June until the first frosts.

Prepare it in autumn if you can. Fork the soil over, work in a couple of barrowloads of well-rotted manure or garden compost, and leave it rough for the winter to let the weather break it down. Annuals want soil that holds moisture but drains freely, and they are not fussy about richness — overfeed them and you will get a great deal of leaf and very few blooms.

Hardy Annuals: The Earliest Rewards

Hardy annuals are the backbone of the patch. They can be sown direct where they are to flower, they shrug off a light frost, and a September sowing will give you flowers a full month ahead of a spring one. If you do nothing else, sow cornflower, calendula and nigella this autumn.

• Cornflower — 'Blue Boy' and the deepest 'Black Ball'. Space plants 20cm apart and they will stand without support.
• Calendula — 'Indian Prince' with its dark-centred orange, or 'Porcupine' for something curious. Pinch out the growing tips once to encourage side shoots.
• Nigella — love-in-a-mist, 'Moody Blues'. Sow where it is to stay; it resents transplanting. The seed heads are as useful as the flowers.
• Ammi majus and orlaya — the lacy, cow-parsley fillers that make a posy look like a painting.
• Larkspur and bupleurum for height and a lovely acid green.

Sow thinly in shallow drills, then thin to 20–30cm when the seedlings are large enough to handle. Thin ruthlessly: crowded seedlings produce spindly, unproductive plants.

Cosmos and the Half-Hardies

Cosmos is the flower that makes a cutting patch worthwhile. 'Purity' is pure white, 'Rubenza' is a deep ruby that fades as it ages, and the 'Double Click' types give you a frilly, almost dahlia-like bloom. It is tender, so sow under cover in late March or April in modules, and plant out only once the last frost has passed — late May in the south, early June in the north.

Pinch out the growing tip when plants reach 30cm to make them branch, and resist the urge to spoil them. Cosmos in rich soil grows to shoulder height and flowers poorly; in a leaner spot it is a flowering machine. Alongside it, sow zinnias, sunflowers such as 'Vanilla Ice', rudbeckia and tobacco plant. These will carry the patch through the hot weeks of July and August, when the hardy annuals are beginning to tire.

Sweet Peas, the Backbone of the Cottage Posy

No cutting garden is complete without them, and no flower is more generous. Sow in October for the strongest plants, or late February to March under cover. Use deep pots or root trainers — sweet peas hate root disturbance — and pinch out the growing tip after two pairs of leaves to force bushy growth.

Plant out in April, 20–25cm apart, against a wigwam, netting or a simple row of canes and string. Old varieties such as 'Cupani' and 'Matucana' have the finest scent; 'Mollie Rilstone' and 'Erewhon' are lovely, reliable things for colour. Give them a feed of tomato fertiliser once they begin to flower, and pick, pick, pick. Cut every two or three days and they will keep producing into September. Leave them unpicked and they will set seed and stop within a fortnight.

Succession Sowing: Keeping the Jug Full

The mistake most of us make is sowing an entire packet in one go in April, which gives a glorious fortnight in July and then nothing. Think in small, regular batches instead.

• Sow a short row or a few modules of cornflower, calendula, nigella, godetia and clarkia every three weeks from March to early July.
• A sowing in early July will often flower from late August into October, especially in a mild year.
• Keep a note in the shed of what you sowed and when — memory plays tricks by midsummer.

Water thoroughly in dry spells, mulch between rows with compost to hold moisture, and stake anything tall before it flops. Deadhead whatever you are not picking, and the plants will keep going rather than putting their energy into seed.

Cutting and Conditioning

Cut in the cool of the morning, once the dew has dried but before the heat of the day. Take long stems — you can always shorten them — and cut just above a leaf joint so the plant throws new shoots below the cut. Carry a bucket of cool water with you rather than a trug; flowers that are plunged straight into deep water will last days longer. Strip the lower leaves so nothing sits below the waterline, and leave the bucket in a cool, dark place for a few hours before arranging. Cosmos and cornflowers will give you a week in the vase; calendula rather less, but it earns its place by flowering its heart out. Keep picking, keep sowing, and there will be a jug on the windowsill until the leaves come down.