Planting My Bountiful, Beautiful Backyard Cutting Garden

"Greedy for fragrance, romance and color, I may have gone overboard."

Debra Prinzing Photo: Mary Grace Long

Debra Prinzing is a Seattle- and Los Angeles-based outdoor living expert writing and lecturing on gardens and home design. Background in textiles, journalism, landscape design, horticulture. Speaks at botanical gardens, horticultural societies, flower shows. Regular radio/TV guest. Recent book: The 50 Mile Bouquet: Local, Seasonal and Sustainable Flowers (St. Lynn's Press, 2012), photographed by David Perry. Other books: Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways (Clarkson-Potter/Random House, 2008), Garden Writers Association Gold Award; The Abundant Garden (2005).

Debra contributes to Better Homes & Gardens; feature stories on architecture/design appear in The Los Angeles Times Home section. Contributing editor to Garden Design; writes for top shelter/consumer publications including Organic Gardening, Horticulture, Fine Gardening, Cottages & Bungalows, Metropolitan Home, Landscape Architecture, Sunset, Alaska Airlines Magazine, Old House Interiors, Seattle Homes & Lifestyles, Romantic Homes.

Hyacinths, pussy willow branches and dusty miller leaves. Photos: Debra Prinzing

Tulips, willow, and camellia branches.

Plant a Cutting Garden

As you plan your cutting garden, consider these 2012 favorites from the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers:

• Queen Red Lime zinnia
• Wentworth viburnum
• Royal Sunset lily

For more ideas, check Cut Flowers of the Year from prior years.

Queen Red Lime zinnia. Photos courtesy of ASCFG

Wentworth viburnum

Royal Sunset lily

I started sweet pea seeds two weeks ago—brilliant green seedlings several inches tall, ready to move from garage seedstarting area to garden.

Greedy for fragrance, romance and color, I may have gone overboard. Chose about a dozen sweet pea varieties. Planting around patio perimeter where a white pergola serves as trellis.

Will stretch vertical twine rows for tendrils, plus set up Expandable Black Bamboo Trellises suspended from pergola beams.

Next week: sow new flats indoors or direct-sow outside, weather depending. List includes nasturtiums, amaranths, cosmos, sunflowers, nicotiana, zinnias. Planting something new weekly after frost passes yields bouquets all season. Many beloved favorites are "cut-and-come-again" flowers—clipping makes them produce more blooms.

For years, gardeners focused on vegetable gardens. But lately, cutting gardens are being rediscovered. Thank goodness! In my new Seward Park, Seattle landscape, I plan to replace a mish-mash of groundcovers, perennials, herbs with a hard-working cutting garden. Friend Kelly Sullivan of Botanique Flowers is helping map it out—need a well-organized scheme that's attractive and ensures lots of blooms.

I'm not alone in wanting more flowers in vases. London Telegraph quoted Mr. Fothergill's Seeds predicting cut flower seeds as the big growth area for three years. "Sales increases ~15% in past 18 months across all cut flower species," Sarah Raven wrote.

"British Isles and Europe tend to be 5+ years ahead of USA in trends," says Ed Hume of Hume Seeds. He hasn't seen the flower-seed explosion yet. Echoed in New York Times by Michael Tortorello: "At the same time flower seed purchases fell, food-garden spending climbed 20%."

Yet after interviewing domestic flower farmers using sustainable practices and eco-conscious florists sourcing locally, I'm convinced the pendulum is swinging back to cutting gardens.

Even if food gardeners aren't vase-obsessed, edible crops benefit from pollinators. What attracts pollinators? Nectar sources: annuals, perennials, flowering plants.