How to Grow a Cut Flower Garden for DIY Bouquets

A bouquet of fresh-cut flowers can brighten up any room in the house. Growing your own flowers for cutting is budget-friendly, sustainable, and extremely rewarding!

Many of our favorite cut flowers for bouquets are easy to grow and make gorgeous, long-lasting arrangements right from your own yard. Plus, we have access to so many amazing colors and varieties that we can grow right here in the Pacific Northwest! We simply can’t buy peonies as nice as those that we can grow, and stems of garden roses tend to be quite expensive to purchase. Follow our tips and recommendations below to start your own cutting garden today!

Choosing Plants for Cut Flowers & Foliage

When selecting plants for your cutting garden, consider the following tips:

1. Focus on easy-to-grow flowers with long bloom seasons and copious amounts of blossoms, such as Roses, Hydrangeas, Dahlias, Sweet Peas, and Zinnias.

2. Choosing pollinator plants for small, filler blooms, such as Lavender or Russian Sage, is a great way to add texture to bouquets while supporting beneficial insects.

3. Use Annuals for heavy bloom production during their growing season—Zinnias, Snapdragons, and Cosmos can be planted by seed or starts and grown for Summer bouquet-making.

4. Perennials make great cut flowers because they return year after year and don’t need to be replanted or heavily maintained. Some of our favorites are Peonies, Dahlias, and Alstroemeria.

5. Shrubs lend contrasting or complementary texture through their seasonal foliage, brilliant fall color, and interesting seed pods or colorful berries.

6. Vines add color, fragrance, and a touch of whimsy—Clematis, Jasmine, and Honeysuckle are great additions to backyard bouquets.

When to Cut Flowers for Bouquets

Cutting flowers for bouquets is best done in early morning while dew is present. Keep a bucket of lukewarm water available to place the cut stems into immediately. The lifespan of a cut flower depends on which stage the flower was in when it was cut:

• Spike-shaped flowers (Salvia, Snapdragon, Veronica) should be cut when 25% of the flowers have opened.
• Cluster flowers should be harvested when they are just opening—if cut too early, they will never open, and if cut too late, they won’t last.
• Blossoms with single stems (Roses, Peonies) are best cut when the flower bud is fully plumped and barely beginning to open—underdeveloped flower buds will often not open if cut too early.

How to Cut Flowers for Bouquets

Different types of stems benefit from special cutting techniques and treatments to extend their life in the vase.

• Woody stems should be split at the cut end to encourage more water uptake.
• Milky stems should be seared at the tip with an open flame or dipped in boiling water.
• Some flowers like Daffodils are best displayed alone instead of mixing with other types of blooms—the cut stems of Narcissus release a latex substance that can interfere with water uptake of other flowers in the same vase.

How to Maintain Cut Flowers for Long-Lasting Blooms

With proper maintenance, you can extend the life of your fresh-cut backyard bouquets for longer enjoyment. Here are some helpful cut flower care tips:

• Place flowers in a clean vase with fresh water; change the water every two days and recut stem ends by ¼ inch each time.
• Remove the foliage from the part of the stem below the water line to help keep the water clean.
• Wash flower vases often to combat the buildup of bacteria, which tends to cause flowers to wilt.
• Create a homemade flower food to add to the water: Mix 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon bleach, 2 teaspoons lemon/lime juice, and 1 quart of lukewarm water

Head out to your garden and cut yourself a bouquet today—you deserve it! If you don’t find much in your own yard, you will find a wide selection of plants at each of our garden centers. Take a few plants home to create gorgeous backyard bouquets for fresh, local beauty at your fingertips.

Our Favorite Cut Flowers for Bouquets

Our mild Pacific Northwest climate provides prime conditions for some of the most prized blooms including double-flowering Tulips, Ranunculus, Peonies, Roses, Delphinium, Lilies, Hydrangeas, Dahlias, and Ornamental Grass plumes.

Even in the dead of Winter, the garden offers brightly-colored Twig Dogwood stems, budded Camellias, and blooming Hellebores to be brought indoors for our enjoyment (Hellebore flowers last longest if cut when blooms are mature with ripening seeds in the center).

The Best Bulbs for Cut Flowers

• Daffodil
• Dahlia
• Gladiolus
• Hyacinth
• Lily
• Tulip

The Best Vines for Cut Flowers

• Clematis
• Honeysuckle
• Jasmine

The Best Accent Foliage for Bouquets

• Camellia
• Cedar
• Evergreen Magnolia
• Fern
• Hosta
• Mexican Orange
• Oregon Grape
• Sarcococca
• Smoke Tree
• Twig Dogwood
• Viburnum