Cut flowers to grow on allotment
Allotments are fantastic for growing fresh vegetables and fruit but have you ever thought about growing flowers on the allotment? Flowers not only look beautiful but they will attract bees and beneficial insects to your allotment, which in turn will help pollinate your fruit and vegetables and possibly help produce a bigger crop. You can also have cut flowers to grow allotment.
Here we will help you and give you some ideas of cut flowers to grow on your allotment. Cut flowers mean when you can grow them and put them in vases at home or even you might want to grow them to gift to someone.
When deciding what cut flowers you want to grow you need to think about if you are growing annual flowers (grows once then dies) or perennial flowers (grows every year). Obviously growing perennial flowers will save you money as you buy them once and they will come back every year. Whereas with annual you need to sow the seed, look after and care for the plants before planting out in the garden. The advantage of annual plants is you can have different plants in different positions each year.
Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book
Are you starting an allotment or planning on growing your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a kitchen garden? If so we highly recommend the book Allotment Month By Month. This does exactly what it does on the cover to help you with what you should be doing in the allotment and kitchen garden each month. Below you can see the link for Amazon where you can purchase the book directly. This book is extremely popular with all allotment holders as you will read in the reviews:-
You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.
What flowers to grow
Wildflowers
Wildflowers are great to grow in a patch of the allotment. Growing wildflowers will attract the bees to your garden and you will be able to cut the flowers and stick them in a vase. You could also try flower pressing. You can purchase wildflower seeds and just scatter them where you want them. At the end of the year, the seeds on the flowers will dry and drop off and reseed themselves.
Sweet Peas
You can either get perennial sweet peas or annual sweet peas. Annual sweet peas are either planted in a greenhouse in February/ March or straight outside in the ground where you want to grow them – these can be planted in late April or May.
Sweet peas are one of the best cut and come again flowers as the more you keep cutting the flowers off the more the flowers will grow. If you let the flowers die-off on the plant and go to seed this will tell the plant to stop producing flowers. So this will encourage you to keep cutting the flowers off. You will be cutting that many sweet pea flowers off that you will be giving them to your family, friends, and neighbors on a daily basis.
Sunflowers
Sunflowers are beautiful to view in the garden, they are even nicer in a vase. Growing sunflowers can be fun and exciting as they come in different sizes, heights, and colors. Not all Sunflowers are yellow. If you are wanting to grow some for a vase you will certainly have to plant a few The best variety of Sunflowers to grow for cutting is a variety called harlequin. When you cut them for a vase they will drink a lot of water a day and will only last around 7-10 days so it may be best to leave them in the garden to last longer and bloom outside
Gladiolus
They are one spectacular flower to grow in the allotment and garden for cut flowers. Gladiolus are elegant and stand tall full of flowers. You can grow all the different colours of Gladiolus in the garden. The only thing with using Gladiolus as cut flowers is that they won’t grow back till the year after once you have cut them down. Many garden centers have great offers on Gladiolus corns. So you could grow some for the garden and some for cut flowers to add to your vase. The best time to cut Gladiolus is just before the flowers open. Like sunflowers, Gladiolus will last in a vase between 7-10 days.
Gladiolus is a good investment in the garden as they come back year after year. If you live somewhere cold in winter it is best to dig them up and store them till next year and replant in spring.
Lillies
One of the most fragrant flowers you can grow for a cut flower is Lillies. Lillies are bulbs that can be planted and they will come back year after year. The only problem with growing lilies in the garden is that they can attract the red lily beetle. When growing lilies for a vase the best thing to do is cut out the pollen stems before taking them home so that you don’t get pollen everywhere and on yourself as it does stain. If you are leaving the Lillies in the garden however leave the pollen stems in so that the insects will enjoy them.
You can get Lillies in all different colors so have a look around and see what varieties you are going to plant in the garden for some fantastic summer displays.
Alliums
Alliums are part of the Onion family and come as large bulbs which are not always particularly cheap to buy but they are fantastic to grow for the bees and butterflies. You will see the bees crawling all over them and enjoying them. I would suggest if you are growing alliums as cut flowers is leave them to flower in the garden then when they die off put them in a vase as the dried out allium looks amazing and will make any dried flower arrangement look stunning. If you do leave them on the plant they will go to seed and could end up producing lots more alliums in your garden.
When planting alliums look into where you are planting them as they are the tallest of the spring bulb so these can easily go at the back of other bulbs to stand tall and prominent.
Snapdragons
Snapdragons or if you want to use the proper name it’s called Antirrhinum. These can be great to grow in the garden as the bees love these and they can self-seed so they can keep growing back year after year in all the garden and allotment.
Snapdragons will keep flowering in the garden between June to October so will have a display all summer into autumn. Snapdragons are best grown in full sun in garden borders to make them the most beneficial.
Spring Bulbs
Spring bulbs are the first thing to pop through the ground in your garden that will add some color to your garden. They are also the first thing the bees see when they come out of hibernation in the spring. You could always grow them for your garden or grow them to cut and put in a vase. Be wary though they won’t last as long in a vase as in the ground, plus they won’t grow again until next year. why not try growing daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths
There are many types of cut flowers you can grow in the garden for in your home and give friends and family. These are just some you can try growing and are extremely easy to grow so any novice could grow them in their garden.
You can find out more about summer bulbs here.
If you want to know the best allotment flowers to grow check out this page here.
Gardening With Ben Podcasts
Did you know that I am an award-winning podcaster winning the award for best Gardening Podcast in the Grow your Own Magazine Awards 2021. You can listen to our regular gardening podcasts on any platform Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Alexa plus lots more – search Gardening with Ben and you will find my podcasts. You can listen to my latest podcast below:-
Click the subscribe button on my podcasts to stay updated with new episodes.
