I noticed the shift in March; the last blast of wintry weather may have had something to do with it. As the smörgåsbord of narcissi I planted two autumns ago came to fruition, I was tempted to brave the sideways-driving sleet to run out and gather them up, rather than leave them to pepper the garden with yellow. For someone who grows things to admire, rather than eat, this is the rarely discussed rub: I find it so hard to cut the damn things.
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When thinking about my fantasy garden – something I was recently invited to do on the Gardens Illustrated podcast – I put in a cut flower bed. In my imagination, it was tucked away in a sunny corner, conveniently placed for me to nip out on summer mornings, to hack away at the blooms I’d been effortlessly conjuring up over the season (this was my fantasy garden, after all). That way, I could have my cake and eat it: a garden full of flowers for me, the pollinators and the birds to enjoy, and fistfuls of blooms to adorn the house.
For someone who grows things to admire, rather than eat, this is the rarely discussed rub: I find it so hard to cut the damn things.
Alas, in reality I have the recently traumatised beds in my small, north-facing garden to contend with. Over the years, I’ve flirted with various kinds of flower growing. There was the sweet pea extravaganza of 2022, and the dahlia explosion of 2021, when the soft coral of ‘Waltzing Mathilda’ was replaced by the bright cerise of not one, but two, deliveries of ‘Juliet’. The Ammi majus that out-grew me was a fun achievement; the mollusc attack on nearly every daffodil going last spring, less so. I’ve never given cosmos enough room or coddling to create those gorgeous clouds I so often pass on verges in country gardens over the summer, but my chocolate cosmos (bought as plugs – the stubborn, non-germinating seeds defeated me) kept going into late November.
When the garden is most abundant, I have relished cutting bunches for friends who are hosting us, often trying to keep them perky through an hour on the Tube in a heatwave.
When the garden is most abundant, I have relished cutting bunches for friends who are hosting us, often trying to keep them perky through an hour on the Tube in a heatwave. It’s an inherently communal act, giving someone beauty that you have ushered from the earth, especially for those who don’t grow or have a garden of their own. It’s also a quietly radical one: the more I grow my own flowers, slug-bitten or otherwise, the more I resist those that have been flown in from far-flung climes or grown unsustainably.
With each passing season I’m more offended by a rose in winter, smothered in chemicals and carrying a weighty carbon footprint. It’s telling that when people do bring me flowers, they are more likely to be half-a-dozen that were grown in the UK, wrapped up in brown paper. I am blessed with good friends.
With each passing season I’m more offended by a rose in winter, smothered in chemicals and carrying a weighty carbon footprint.
Seasonal floristry is where the organic food movement was 20 years ago, but it’s gaining pace. Each year, it seems as though British Flowers Week gains more traction, and there have been a flurry of excellent books promoting a more ecologically sensitive approach to floristry in recent years, including Grace Alexander’s Grow and Gather; Milli Proust’s From Seed to Bloom; Anna Potter’s Flower Philosophy; How to Grow the Flowers by Camila Romain and Marianne Mogendorff; and the essential Cut Flowers from Celestina Robertson. Between them, they offer more than just swoonworthy photographs, in their pragmatic approach to growing cut flowers, working with our ever-changeable seasons and, ultimately, making your own kind of beauty.
This summer, my bunches will be more cohesive, thanks to that snazzy new colour scheme I recently introduced, and also, I suspect, more modest: fennel, roses, a lot of foliage. When I was meant to be sowing annuals, I was feeding a baby on three-hourly shifts. Thank goodness I cut the narcissi when I did: a vase full of sunshine when there was none outside.