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Flowers for the Cutting Garden

There is a strong message in the gardening press and media at present to encourage gardeners to grow cut flowers for the house. This mirrors the drive to grow your own vegetables (where of course flavour is an important factor as well as the obvious environmental impact of flying produce half way round the world). It is certainly something I strongly support.

With Peter Booker’s articles on carnations in Garden News I have been taking this publication regularly and finding it a good read. However their article on April 4th “Grow your own cut flowers” was, I thought, disappointing. “Why?” you may well ask. Not a single mention of dianthus in any shape or form! I find this incredible. “The King” of cut flowers not even getting a mention.

I am not suggesting that the flowers mentioned are not suitable as cut flowers. Indeed some are very good and productive. But none have the qualities of our chosen blooms. Vase life is good for all dianthus, at least two weeks. Compare this with dahlias which last three or four days, sweet peas which really are past their best after 24 or 48 hours and even roses which in the heat of the summer readily drop their petals.

Nothing has the year round availability, if properly cared for, of the dianthus family. Perpetual Carnations and Perpetual Spray Carnations provide cut flowers 365 days of the year if grown under glass with a little heat.

Annual carnations can be grown in their hundreds from a packet of seeds and picked in bunches from the garden all summer long.

Modern pinks have a long productive period in the summer up until the first frosts. Many are highly scented.

Border carnations have a shorter flowering period but as well as exquisite colour ranges often have overpowering scent and this is the case with many old fashioned pinks.

As well as making superb cut flowers for the home, and to give away, dianthus can be used as buttonholes, bouquets, table arrangements, floral tributes etc. There is no limit to their versatility.

I could go on and on. (The one consolation was that chrysanthemums were only mentioned in passing, and orchids such as cymbidiums which are easy to grow and last even longer as cut flowers than carnations didn’t even get a mention).

Let us hope that before long Garden News “puts the record straight” and highlight the best cut flower that you can grow! I will have to keep reading it to see.