A Year of Cut Flowers

Bright, beautiful and achievable – Mary Berry

Tips, tricks, and everything you could possibly wish to know about planning, growing, and arranging your own cutting garden from the queen of cut flowers, Sarah Raven.

Sarah shares the secrets she has evolved over decades at Perch Hill to keep cut flower production nearly constant, from the start of the growing year to the end. With her unparalleled expertise up your sleeve, you’ll have a house full of flowers conditioned to last well in a vase, and an abundant garden always brimming with colour.

With plenty of cut-flower inspiration and practical advice such as:

• How to choose high, medium, and low productive cut-and-come-again plants so you can enjoy bountiful vases of home-grown blooms.
• Which plants should form the backbone of any cutting patch or garden, large or small.
• Plant rotation, with a selection of plant groups coming in and out of the same patch of soil.
• A year-round plan to achieve efficient cut flower production and ensure the highest possible production from minimal space.
• How to condition and arrange your cut flowers for maximum impact and longevity.

I am passionate about growing cut flowers — it's been my main gardening obsession for over 30 years. It’s an ever-filling cup, gardening for the optimist, the greedy flower lover, who wants to fill their house with colour, scent and abundance without shopping. That’s me and I hope many of you and what this book is about, the things we can all pick month by month, what one should think of sowing and growing at that moment, and how I love to arrange what’s been picked. I’ll take you through the year and show you everything I’ve learnt about growing cut flowers over three decades, but most of all why having home-grown cut flowers in one’s house is an easy life transformer.