Best Cut Flowers for Beginners

Growing and harvesting fresh-cut flowers brings so much joy! They are truly a gift from God. We primarily grow cut flowers in our garden and they are so easy, you should too! They are simple to incorporate into your vegetable garden or already established perennial bed. Below, I will dig deeper into my five favorite cut flowers. I have grown these varieties for years in many different soil types, sunlight exposures and seasons. If you’re just beginning to grow your own cut flowers, make sure to check out the list of simple tips at the end of this post.

*I will not go into detail on how to grow each flower. I will also not go into detail on how to prepare your garden site or how to harvest your flowers.

What’s considered a “cut flower”?

I think of cut flowers as flower varieties that produce long stems and have long vase life. Longer stems are easy to work with when designing fresh flower bouquets and long vase life assures you or your customer will enjoy the beautiful blooms for ample time. 

Many of the blooms that flower farmers grow are annual flowers. Annuals are defined as plants that germinate, sets seeds and die in one year. That means the plant will only last one season and you will need to replant each succession or year with new seed. It is often possible to save an annual seed and replant the following spring. It is also likely that your flowers will die off and drop seed. If you leave that seed undisturbed you may find seedlings next spring, what a beautiful gift! Different seeds have different hardiness levels so what works for me will be different for you. My favorite book on describing hardy seeds is Cool Flowers by Lisa Mason Ziegler. Check out my blog post Best Flower Farming Books for more books I love.

Annuals are much cheaper than perennials (plants that come back year after year). The low investment makes it easier to experiment and try different varieties to see what works best for your style and location. Planting annual cut flower seeds is much lower pressure compared to designing a permanent garden bed with perennial plants. If you don’t like a flower, forgo it next season, or try a different variety from a different supplier! Even a veteran flower farmer changes it up year to year. Easy flowers one year may perform differently for you next year.

Cut flower seed suppliers

 Seed catalogs can be overwhelming. The pictures look so enticing and everything looks easy to grow. That’s not always the case, many cut flowers are extremely fussy and the seeds are nearly impossible to germinate (like lisianthus). After one failed crop, the home gardener may give up altogether. Please don’t do that! 

Online

I have tried many different seed companies and the two best I can recommend for the home gardener are Johnny Select Seeds and Baker Creek. These seeds have excellent germination rates and the companies are top-notch with credibility and customer service. You will be able to find them much cheaper elsewhere, but if you’re a first-time grower, I’d suggest buying the tried and true. Johnny Select Seeds has a large resource library too.

Nursery Centers

Local nurseries can be great resources for seed. Ask if the seeds they sell are the ones they grow themselves (they should be). Grain and feed stores often have bulk seed options for plants like zinnias and sunflowers. These can be a great price, but often you need to buy way more than you need. Start small so you don’t get overwhelmed! It may be hard to find specific cut flower varieties at these stores. For instance, you might be able to buy sunflower seeds that are meant for large-scale field growing, not necessarily cut flowers. 

Farm Markets

Farm markets can be one of the best resources to find plants. The growers will most likely be growing these varieties in their own garden with a similar climate as yours. Be sure to ask them if the varieties they are selling have tall stem length and long vase life. Farm Markets are often where I buy specialty herb plants.

Things to avoid when purchasing seeds and plants

People often buy flats of beautiful flowers from nurseries in early spring with the assumption they will grow all season. There are two main problems with this:

• The flowers they are buying are at the end of their growing season and will soon die off
• The flowers being sold are not intended for cut flower growing

Cut flowers that bloom in spring, usually don’t bloom in mid-summer or late summer unless you continually replant new seed (succession planting). Have you ever bought a flat of beautiful snapdragons from a garden center with the intent of growing them all season just to find them to die soon after you plant them? You may get discouraged that you don’t have a “green thumb”, but the truth is those plants were sold to you at the end of their natural growing season. You may be able to trim them down, fertilize them and encourage a second bloom but in my experience, the best way is to start seed yourself. Starting seed yourself, or buying a less mature plant allows you to follow the growing season more aligned with nature, and your plant will most likely grow better.

Many of the flower varieties sold at garden centers are meant to be bedding or landscape plants. These plants are bred to be shorter which doesn’t result in a long stem flower and are not meant for fresh flower arrangements. Like Snapdragons for example, there are hundreds of different varieties. Some may be cultivated for cut flowers, with nice tall stems and some may be cultivated for pots with short, compact stems. It doesn’t mean these plants are bad, they just have a completely different purpose!

Due your diligence to ensure you are growing one of the best cut flowers possible!

If you decide to purchase pre-started seeds, or “plugs” please make sure you are confident they are intended for cut flower growing. Also, take a look at nature. What is growing in the ditches? If nothing is naturally sprouting up in the fields or gardens in your community, don’t be enticed to buy plants that are a foot tall and halfway through their growing season. And please don’t buy plants before your last frost date unless you have an intense plan on how to protect those babies!

Respect nature and its beautiful design. Slow down and be patient! 

Incorporating flowers into established flower beds

For those of you who already have established perennial flowers in your garden adding in annual cut flowers will be an easy way to bring in a variety of color and shape. Review your garden notes or take a look at any pictures of your garden you may have of last year. Look for empty ground space and examine where you can squeeze in a gathering of plants. You can make a beautiful statement with a small cluster of cut flowers. Plants like zinnias and cosmos branch out tremendously so pay attention to their spacing requirements and obey the seed packet recommendations!  

When planting it is a good idea to place plants in a grid pattern or follow the “rule of odds” to create visual balance. Picture a five sided dice, or a triangle. When the plants grow they will form into a nice hedge as opposed to be growing in straight rows. This helps give the illusion of one big luscious plant instead of several small stems. 

Now that I may have intimidated you with all the wrong things to do, let’s bring it back to the five best cut flowers you can grow for your home garden. I could have easily chosen ten, but I encourage you to start small. If you grow these well, your garden will be overflowing with beauty and you can learn to grow more fresh cut flowers next spring!

How do I qualify a cut flower as one of the “Best Cut Flowers”?

• Easily grown in the ground or raised bed
• Easy to germinate
• Long vase life 
• Comes in a variety of colors
• Adaptable to full sun, part shade
• Tough stems (resilient to little children)
• Is beautiful as a stand-alone flower or arranged with others from the list
• ​Doesn’t wilt immediately after cutting

The best-cut flowers for your home garden!

In this list, I will dig deeper into why each plant should be included in your own cutting garden.

*I will not include specific growing requirements that will be found on the back of the seed packets. *

Benary Giant Zinnia

These come in the most beautiful variety of colors and provide a beautiful contrast when arranged together. The blooms are truly giant and can really make an impact in a small-cut flower garden. I like to mix and match different colors and haven’t found one I don’t enjoy in my own cut flower bed. Salmon is always a favorite. Zinnias can be prone to powdery mildew, so make sure to give them adequate spacing to ensure airflow around their stems. They branch out tremendously ensuring a long bloom time for you to enjoy. 

Benary Giant, Oklahoma, and Queen Series are favorite varieties.

Sweet Peas

Sweet peas are worth it to grow for their scent alone. I swear, it is the best thing in the spring. These have the ability to grow quite tall and will need a trellis. They also love a good dose of manure and organic matter added in to the soil. Don’t let that intimidate you. They start out slow growing in the spring and you will feel like they aren’t growing for weeks. But, after a heavy rain, they can grow inches in a day. They are considered a “come-again flower” and the more you cut the more they produce, sounds like a pretty good investment to me! They are considered gems in the high-end floral design for their classic and eloquent beauty. 

Cosmo

There is something about this airy, romantic flower that makes it such a stand-alone beauty. The Versailles variety is the most common among flower farms and for a good reason. The foliage is a great filler for mason jar bouquets and the blooms are hardy, sometimes making it through your first frost. More cutting promotes more blooming, so don’t be afraid to cut yourself a bouquet of flowers for yourself. The best varieties for beginners are Versailles and Double Click.

Giant Marigold

I gave marigolds the worst name for the longest time. All I could think about were these short little puny, smelly, Halloween colored plants that I’d walk past in the garden center. Not until I found their updated taller plant version. They are incredibly pest and deer-resistant, and awesome for drying and dyeing fabric making them unique among this list. When you grow these for the first time, you won’t believe how massive one plant can get. Make sure you purchase a “Giant” variety.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are an obvious must when it comes to growing your own flowers. A few things to note when it comes to sunflowers, deer love them, plan accordingly! They are also the only flower on this list that are single stem producing. That means you will only get one bloom for plant. However, they are SO easy to grow and their vase life is incredible. They are also one of the taller flowers on this list so make sure to plant them behind your smaller flowers. My favorite varieties are the procut series and horizon. Make sure the seeds you’re buying are marked for cut flower growing, if they are meant for field growing they may not have a great vase life. Variety is an extremely important factor!

You cannot go wrong with these varieties! To get more specific growing information on each please study the seed packets.

Simple Tips to ensure great success in your own cut flower garden!

• Early morning is the best time to walk your garden with a cup of tea or coffee and take note of what’s happening. The sunny dew-dipped buds and sun-reaching stems will bring you a sense of peace and clarity, take note of what is happening in a garden journal for you to review next year!
• Avoid working in the heat of the day, do your best to do harvesting and planting in the early morning. Even if a flower looks perfect, cutting it in the heat of the day may cause it to wilt. 
• Take notes, or at least lots of pictures for you to reflect on at the end of the season and the following year. 
• In the winter months, look through your photos and write down what was blooming during each month. Better yet, print out photos and make a visual collage of your garden to inspire you for the next season.
• Make sure to follow the directions on the back of the seed packets when growing. When buying from reputable companies like Johnnys Select Seeds and Baker Creek you can trust that they know what they’re doing. 
• New plants will require more frequent watering than established plants, just like a newborn baby. It is the best method to keep a close eye on them the first week you plant them. Check them frequently and make sure they have sufficient water. 

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.