Anyone who loves gardening will understand the excitement of flicking through seed catalogues over the winter months and envisaging the swathes of plants and flowers — that will follow. Or maybe veg are more your thing? Opening a seed catalogue is like opening a magic door; transporting you from the cold grey days of winter into a summery garden or flower plot of perfect blooms. In your dreams, the flowers are identical to the photos and all you had to do was throw the seeds on to perfect, weed-free ground. The reality is a little more complicated, as is the selection process, if like us you have specific requirements from your flowers other than looking pretty. Though looking pretty is very important. If they don’t look pretty, they must either be interesting, smell good, or dry well!
Opening a catalogue is like opening a magic door; transporting you from the cold grey days of winter into a summery garden or flower plot of perfect blooms.
It’s good to start planning well in advance
At Blooming Green, choosing our seeds, plants and flowers for the coming season, is a team effort, which starts the previous year. At the end of the flower season, in late autumn, the floristry department get together to discuss what worked, what didn’t, what our customers liked — as well as general trends.
Once we have a decent list, with comments and observations, we get together with Bek. Bek will open one of her enormous spread sheets, usually the previous year’s seed order, and we compare notes. Usually, the question will be: “More? Less? Get rid?” Or, we may consider the same flower but in different colours.
Sometimes, there will be something that us florists love, which is a pain in the proverbial to grow. Bupleurum sits in this category, as does craspedia, as the deer love it. Larkspur for us, is hit and miss, but we generally give it a whirl.
We might have to grovel a bit or bribe Bek with a biscuit — but every year is a fresh start and it’s fun to mix things up a bit.
Some of our favourite seed suppliers…
Our favourite seed suppliers — Moles, Chiltern Seeds, Plants of Distinction, Higgledy Garden, are clearly aware of the rise in popularity of home-grown cut-flowers. Many are described as ‘great for cutting’ or are accompanied by the little scissor symbol. Chilterns have brilliant written descriptions, which are like a short story in themselves. Sometimes, the photograph is the clincher.
Plant breeders are also in on the cut-flower action, with many flowers clearly having been bred for their long straight stems, decent vase life and suitability for using in a floral arrangement as a focal, filler or secondary flower. Each year we will try some of these ‘new kids on the block’ although they are generally a little more expensive.
Some flowers we will choose with weddings in mind, others for their suitability for our farm shop, others for drying and some for pick your own.
Before we plant, we have to ask… How or where are we going to use the flowers?
Some flowers we will choose with weddings in mind, others for their suitability for our farm shop. Others we choose for drying and some for pick your own. You may wonder what difference it makes… An example would be cornflowers. Our pick-your-own customers absolutely love them — but they are quite small and really time-consuming to pick. So, we don’t use them a huge amount for wedding flowers, unless they are specifically requested. And if we do, we’ll just pick a few. Flax is amazing for drying — though the flowers are really insignificant and are rarely spotted by those doing pick your own. Sunflowers are popular for PYO — and photo opportunities — but are not that popular for weddings at the moment, but that could change next year.
Our overall aim it to have a really broad array of flowers, in different colours shapes and forms, from April until the end of October.
So, as you can probably tell, a lot of time and though goes into our seed selection. Our overall aim it to have a really broad array of flowers, in different colours shapes and forms, from April until the end of October. This is to cover, not only the tastes of our customers, but also to try and outfox the weather, pests and diseases. It’s no mean feat. But we’re not going to worry about that now — we’re just going to keep on flicking through those pages and dreaming of the perfect flower season to come…
If you’d like to know more about seed-sowing and cut-flower flower choice, book onto our Grow Your Own Cut Flowers: Sowing & Growing Annuals