Beginner's Bunch

While the weather is still pretty woeful, now is the time to finish planning your cut flower garden for this year. 

If you've never grown any cut flowers, why not give it a go? I will suggest some easy plants to get you going.

Perennial plants are the ones that will come back each year. At the back, you could have the tall, airy verbena bonariense, with some catmint and linaria (toadflax) in the middle and lady's mantle (alchemilla mollis) and dianthus at the front. These are all pretty easy and most will self sow to give you more free plants to bulk up your stock.

Easy annuals - that you have to sow from seed each year, include cornflowers, cosmos, scabious, cerinthe & clary sage - all easy to sow and maintain - the one thing you have to remember with annuals is that you have to keeping cutting them or they will run to seed and that will be the end of your plentiful supply of beautiful cut flowers.

The lovely cerinthe - the bees love it too!

Herbs will supply you with some useful, beautifully scented foliage.- especially applemint & lemon balm.

If you would like to learn more, I'm running some workshops on growing your own cut flowers.

6^th April - 2.00-5.00pm         or        14^th September - 2.00-5.00pm        

Grow Your Own Cut Flowers   £35.00

Come and take a guided tour of our garden, including the “Cut Flower Field” where you will be shown how to create and maintain your own cut flower patch, to provide you with beautiful, scented blooms to adorn your home. We will provide you with a wealth of knowledge on which plants grow best in our Northern Irish climate, which give the best scent and vase life, together with details of which varieties produce the most flowers per plant. The course includes, to take home, an informative fact sheet, seeds and plant plugs to get you started.

13^th April - 10.00am-4.00pm (Includes lunch)

Grow and Arrange Your Own Cut Flowers            £70.00

This course covers how to grow your own cut flowers as described above, followed by an afternoon learning how to make beautiful floral arrangements, finishing with a hand tied bouquet which you will then take home with you.