Details for two gardens that ensure bouquets from summer to fall

As a founding employee of Gardener's Supply, I wore many different hats over the years. Currently, I have my own company called Johnnie Brook Creative. The gardens around my home in Richmond, VT, include a large vegetable garden, seasonal greenhouse, cutting garden, perennial gardens, rock garden, shade garden, berry plantings, lots of container plants and a meadow garden. There's no place I'd rather be than in the garden.

The cutting garden in mid-July.

Cutting Garden 1

This garden is designed for a 7-foot by 7-foot planting area. Each of the 14 sections measures 1-foot deep and 3-feet wide. In most cases, we put 6 plants in each section (about 2 plants per 1-foot x 1-foot area). The sunflowers were not planted as densely.

Teddy Bear sunflowers and Cupani sweet peas Path Teddy Bear sunflowers and Cupani sweet peas Double Click cosmos Bishop's lace (Ammi majus) Buenos Aires verbena (Verbena bonariensis) Blue Horizon ageratum Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium 'White Wonder') Clary sage (Salvia viridis) Berry Basket zinnia Lime Green nicotiana Polar Bear zinnia Blue Boy bachelor buttons Giant Fantasy zinnia Lilliput zinnia

Cutting Garden 2

This garden is designed for a 7-foot by 8-foot planting area. As above, each of the 16 sections measures 1-foot deep and 3-feet wide. We planted just one dahlia tuber per square foot.

Who Dun It dahlia Path Who Dun It dahlia Mixed gladiolus Buenos Aires verbena (Verbena bonariensis) Berry Basket zinnia Hot Crayon Colors zinnia Berry Basket zinnia Hot Crayon Colors zinnia Rocket White snapdragon Lime Green nicotiana Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium 'White Wonder') Blue Horizon ageratum Bishop's lace (Ammi majus) Victoria Blue salvia Blue Boy bachelor button Clary sage (Salvia viridis)

The designs for these pint-size cutting gardens, employs the same 1 ft. x 1 ft. thinking that we brought to the vegetable garden in our Kitchen Garden Planner. There's nothing special about the dimensions of these two garden designs — these are just the dimensions of the beds we had available in our display gardens here in Burlington, VT. It should be easy to adjust these plans to suit whatever space you have available in your own garden. We allowed for a 1-foot wide path down the center (a section of the 12-inch wide recycled rubber Edge Border worked perfectly).

Most of the garden was planted directly from seed. We planted the seeds as soon as possible after any danger of frost had passed. The flowers that went in as plants were the verbena, ageratum, salvia, snapdragons and feverfew. These plants all grow from tiny seeds, and you may find — as we did — that it's easier to deal with them indoors under lights or in the greenhouse. We planted the dahlias as tubers (before they had begun to sprout) and the glads went in as corms (bulbs).

Feel free to substitute with your own favorite flowers. For other good cutting garden candidates, check out the articles in Related Information, below.

Related Information

• Feed Your Soul: Plant a Cutting Garden
• Growing Annual Flowers
• Using Weed Fabric: Weed-blocking cloth keeps garden pathways looking sharp.
• In our blog: Growing dahlias in the cutting garden