Читать книгу In Bloom - Clare Nolan - Страница 15

Look at your existing garden through the eyes of a florist, not a gardener and give yourself permission to cut anything you like the look of (that may take some getting used to). Set aside any preconceptions about what you think a flower display should be – if you like the look of something, cut a few stems and try it – you only have yourself to please.

Keep your plants healthy and productive by making sure your cuts are clean (tools should be sharp) and cut back to a set of leaves or buds. Try to keep things as even as you can – no picking from just one side of a shrub.

If you’re short on space, try and choose plants that are as productive as possible for the space they use (you may decide that foxgloves and peonies don’t make your list for that reason). Put the vertical space to good use: there’s always room for another climber – their vertical growth means they take up very little room.

Make use of any gaps in beds and borders, either filling them with annuals or clusters of bulbs that you can leave to naturalize. Choose a good mix of cut and come-again annuals that will keep pumping out flowers, fillers, and foliage, leaving some to be enjoyed in the garden as well as picked – deadhead regularly those you have left for garden display to keep the flowers coming.

If you think creatively you can plant flowers to cut where it will go unnoticed – narcissi bulbs can be left to naturalize under fruit trees or in grass, shorter narcissi or muscari can sit along the edges of borders.

The secret to making the space you do have most efficient is to start plants off in pots elsewhere so that they are up and growing before the patch you’re planting them into has even become available – giving you a head start. It also means that your garden is looking better for longer.

For me a cutting garden would be incomplete without tulips and dahlias – they work well in pots if that is the only spot available to you. They make the perfect planting partners to share the same space – with dahlias replacing the dahlias once the tulips have finished. Plant tulips in blocks or dense clusters, really close together (like eggs in an egg carton) so that you’ll have plenty to pick as well as leave to flower in the garden if you want. Once they have bloomed, pull up the bulbs and replace with dahlias. Dahlias need about 5 in² (30cm²) of space per plant.