Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom

Flowers in the home are a luxury, but I think they’re also a necessity – I agree with Vita Sackville-West’s view that ‘A flowerless room is a soulless room’. A display that makes you smile is worth its weight in gold, and if you grow the blooms yours

When you’re given a gift of flowers, what’s the first thing you do? You bury your nose in them and inhale deeply. What we love about a bunch of flowers is the sensory experience – the colours, textures, shapes and luscious scent. But as well as that,

When I first moved from London to Perch Hill, a small farm in East Sussex, I had a vague dream of giving up my job as a hospital doctor and staying at home to grow cut flowers. From the age of seven or eight, I’d loved picking flowers and then arrang

Ammi majus has lacy flowers, rather like a more delicate form of cow parsley. It’s the best white filler-foliage you can grow and is spectacular arranged in a great cloud on its own. Aim to pick it just before the tiny white flowers are fully open as

While sage (salvia officinalis) is generally thought of as a culinary plant, this bold blue variety of clary sage packs a punch in flower beds from May to September. Use the variety Salvia viridis ‘Blue’ to line the edge of your cutting patch – it wi

Rudbeckias make truly wonderful, very long-flowering cut flowers. Belonging to the sunflower family, they come in a sumptuous mix of mahogany, nutmeg, yellow and burnt marmalade colours. Rudbeckia ‘Cherry Brandy’ is one of my favourite flowers, with

Cosmos is one of my absolute favourite plants. It gives you the highest square-inch productivity of any cut flower, so for every square foot that you plant, you’ll get more buckets of cut flowers from that square foot than you will with any other pla

Dahlias are the highlight of the late summer. Keep picking them and one dahlia tuber will produce hundreds of flowers. I grow dahlias in nearly all their shapes and forms, from delicate singles to the gravity-defying ‘dinner plate’ varieties. Dahlias

Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’ (Honeywort) has silvery leaves with purple hanging bells, and is one of the best annual foliage plants. I absolutely love this plant, and it gently self-sows, so after your initial investment you never need buy it again.

One of my favourites, Amaranthus caudatus produces long, soft tassels. You may have seen the widespread crimson version that gives it its common name but try the fresh, acid-green ‘Viridis’ as a much better mixer – it subtly enhances whites and blues

The marigold is many people’s least favourite plant for some reason. I admit I used to be a subscriber to the ‘anti orange and yellow in your garden’ club, but once I was arranging flowers regularly I joined the opposite camp – the more bright, easy-

Let this quotation from botanist and horticulturalist Luther Burbank be all the encouragement you need to treat yourself to a garden of beautiful blooms. Tap the link above then print the pages and stick them together. Once you’ve picked your favour

Panicum elegans is a beautiful, airy grass that forms great puffs of green. It’s one of the most productive foliage plants you can add to your cutting patch and one of the best upper-storey foliage plants for cutting. Just add three to five stems to

If you’re thinking of choosing scabious seeds (also known as pincushion flower), the mauves, dark oranges, whites and pinks of a collection such as ‘Tall Double Mix’ are pretty for informal bunches, but it’s the deep crimson form I like best. They li

Snapdragons are invaluable for their full flower spikes, which last well over a week in water. Look out for the elegant, single-colour florist’s varieties and avoid dwarf forms (often sold as bedding plants) as the stem won’t be long enough for cutti

Cleome seeds can be bought in a variety of shades. ‘Colour Mix’ has elegant flowers of white, pink and purple, which look rather like daddy long legs on a stem. These look good in the garden and mixed up together in a jumble in a large vase, or you c

Euphorbia oblongata is the all-round best-looking, longest-flowering foliage plant you can find anywhere in the world. It forms the base of 95% of my floral arrangements, and lines most of the beds in my garden at Perch Hill. You never tire of its br

Sunflowers make the most glamorous cut flowers, and are hugely prolific and long-flowering. For daintier displays try Helianthus debilis ‘Vanilla Ice’ which has smaller, creamy white flowers, which are wonderful for hand-tied bunches. I’d also recomm

Sow as many sweet peas as you can. You won’t regret it – they’ll fill your life with colour and scent. Choosing which to grow is a task in itself, so start with monotone groups of your favourite colours – although, of course, sweet peas are more abou

There’s nothing nicer than the jumble of colours of these zinnia flowers in a jug on the kitchen table. The blooms are spectacular, huge and long-lasting, a wonderful mix of oranges, reds, pinks and yellows. Look out for ‘Giant Dahlia Mix’ seed colle

COSMOS ‘PURITY’ – the ever winning, ever productive cut flower classic. COSMOS ‘RUBENZA’ – shorter and therefore ideal for a pot or smaller garden. SALVIA VIRIDIS ‘BLUE’ – my replacement for lavender, which flowers for three times as long and looks b

As tempting as it might be to simply toss a selection of seeds into the soil for a random, ‘country meadow’ patch, a little planning will let you maximise the amount of flowers you can harvest, and will also keep your plants happy by ensuring they ha

Think in manageable squares as even a small piece of ground can make you feel unsure where to start. For the sake of easy maths, I divide my patch into squares of 25x25cm. So my 2x2m plot becomes a grid of eight by eight squares. I draw this out on a

Cultivating a flower patch is inexpensive and eco-friendly, so replacing plastic seedling pots with recycled paper versions is sure to appeal. Each pot takes less than two minutes to make, and when it’s time to plant out your seedlings you can simply

It’s the wettest day of the winter when we visit Hartley Farm near Bradford-on-Avon. We’ve come to meet Grace Farrimond, co-owner of Young Blooms, a gem of a florists adopted by the renowned farm shop. Almost there, we pass Grace’s growing patch, the

Beautiful and practical, this woven tote bag is just the thing to take into your flower patch to transport freshly picked blooms back to the house ready to be arranged. Sturdy and spaciously designed, each bag is individually handmade so no two are t

The process of making a flower arrangement involves many of the same principles that go into making fine art, and that’s why the term ‘painterly’ is how I like to describe my style of arranging. I can remember standing, transfixed, in front of Monet’

The vases we use for our arrangements are as important as the flowers we select to put into them. We look for containers, vessels and vases all over the place – car boots, charity shops, eBay, the flower market, antique shops, flea markets… When we w

Your choice of container is going to add so much to the look of any flower display you create. There are no rights or wrongs here – it’s good to go with what appeals to you and fits with the scale of your flowers. You’ll only need a few shapes to sta

• Vase • Chicken wire with large holes • Pot tape • Pair of floristry scissors Icelandic poppies, Roses, Astrantia, Scabious, Nerine, Ranunculas, Butterfly ranunculas, Tulips, Hellebores, Narcissi, Sprirea, Anenomes, Lisianthus, Mimosa, Autumnal euc

As a flower writer and photographer, immersing myself in the incredible array of beautiful floral images on Instagram is something I just can’t resist. And to follow the personal stories of my favourite Instagrammers, week by week, is such a privileg

There’s a lot to be said for keeping your vases plain, to better show off the flowers within them, but this ingenious upcycling project shows how a decorated container can actually enhance your cut blooms. Designed by stylist Holly Becker, they’re a

Fresh petal confetti is a fantastic alternative to the shop-bought, paper variety. It’s equally effective with a mix of shades and shapes or with just one colour. Flowers that work particularly well are roses, individual delphinium heads and sweet pe

Make plans for next summer with a rose wish list, book a place on a workshop, and be inspired by books to treasure ■

Roses are arguably some of the best (I would say the best, of course) of all garden plants. After all, what else can potentially have a beautiful flower, a wonderful fragrance, be easy to look after and flower for five or six months of the year? I ce

By Louise Curley Frances Lincoln Limited Through years of experience on her own cutting patch, Louise (AKA blogger ‘wellywoman’) is able to advise with confidence on the flower varieties that are most abundant, easiest to grow and which last well w

Your flower patch will be beautiful to look at but you should think of it as a place to harvest a crop. To maximise your haul, you’ll need to consider these points when choosing where to plant… * A sunny situation is a must, with a minimum of six h

Secateurs are like heavy-duty scissors and are perfect for trimming thick or woody stems. Try to buy these in person as it’s good to get a feel for them and see if the handle shape suits your hand. Avoid temptation in the form of pretty patterned han