How to Grow a Cut Flower Garden in Raised Beds

Every year, we pick a theme for the coming twelve months. It’s a largely intuitive process - the word seems to magically spring to mind when setting intentions. For 2019, our theme is ‘nurture’ - ourselves, our family, our careers, our doggies, and our garden. I have a family history of green fingered folk, but have never been able to justify the time required to keep a whole load of extra dependants going on top of the gorgeous two and four-legged ones I already have. But now the house is largely finished, we decided to turn our attention to the garden. I wanted to grow a cutting garden of sweet peas, roses, dahlias, peonies and cosmos so that every time I fancied some cut flowers for the house, I could just wander out into the garden with my secateurs. Here’s how we got on…

First, we needed raised beds to grow the flowers in, on the basis that three leg-lifting Jack Russells with no sense of decorum would need some kind of physical boundary between them and the flowers. I laid out the pattern with bricks, and left it there for a few weeks to mull over the design.

We managed to get the first two built before winter set in.

Spring came around, and number three went down…

And number four…

And number five…

And finally number six. As you can see, we’re now in paddling pool weather - the whole thing took about six months. We’re strong advocates for slow DIY.

Building the raised beds was kind of fun - you can read a detailed post about how we built them here. Bricklaying is excellent exercise, great flow activity, and fun for the whole family.

Who needs a kettlebell… also, DIY slippers (obviously).

Part of the reason why it took so long to finish the raised beds was because we kept stopping to throw parties :-)

Easter egg hunt.

Seven year old’s birthday party - all the parents turned up to pick up their kids and then refused to go home :-)

We filled the raised beds with two tonnes of topsoil and compost, and I started planting.

Strawberries in the top bed, peonies, dahlias and a David Austin rose in the bottom beds.

More David Austin roses, mint and peonies. Plus an eight year old making a den under a load of acer branches.

It all looked nice and controlled at first. That didn’t last long…

The cosmos exploded (grown from seed by me! Proud). The mint went bonkers. The dahlias grew about ten times bigger than I expected (they’re still flowering like mad, and it’s the middle of October). A rogue sunflower appeared. I’d given up on the gladioli, thinking they were getting too much shade to flower, when they suddenly burst into bloom and I had to run around staking them so they didn’t fall over constantly. The weeds went wild. The roses needed constant dead-heading. Turns out keeping on top of a flower garden is jolly hard work!

Pink and white cosmos, sweet peas, mint and dahlias.

Massive dahlias. They’re supposed to be Cafe au Lait but have come out completely white.

This baby’s about the size of a dinner plate.

These cosmos have made brilliant cut flowers. I’ve cut literally hundreds of them and they’re still going.

A lovely David Austin rose.

This is a David Austin standard rose called Harlow Carr - it smells amazing.

Things I have learned…. don’t plant mint in a raised bed, it will take over. I started off with three teeny plants that are now huge. I’m going to move them to a shaded part of the garden and see if that slows them down. Cosmos plants are also huge - much bigger than I expected. Next year they need a bed of their own. Ditto the dahlias - they were massive! And need a sturdy cage of some kind to grow through to support the weight of the flower heads.

Things Penny has learned - don’t try and force your way through the fence…

Look at all these beautiful specimens…

A final before and after…

Look, we have a patio too!

The next garden job is installing the fence properly - we need it to stop the dogs from running amok in the garden, leaving golden packages everywhere, rolling in the mud, and then coming inside and rolling on the pale grey linen sofa. But we can definitely make it look prettier than it does now. I’ve also got a plan to set some more herringbone bricks into the ground immediately in front of the deck. I’ll probably share some progress on Instagram so feel free to follow along there for updates.