Editor Kim Stoddart explains how to start sourcing further blooming marvellous opportunities for display vases outside the flower beds
One of the sheer joys of summer has to be the picking of lovely fresh blooms with which to decorate the home. It’s also nice to know that these heart-warming, home-grown displays can be cost, plastic, pesticide and air mile-free.
There are also less obvious choices to be harvested from the wider garden if you allow your vegetable patch to grow on a little, as by growing a little wilder, some of the freely-available produce blooms will duly emerge either this year or next. As well as furthering the reach of your cut flower opportunities, such an approach will also help boost biodiversity in your garden and provide valuable habitats for wildlife, creating an outside space that is truly alive and bountiful in every sense.
Blooms to harvest this year
Mint
This cheeky but delicious herb produces pretty little purple flowers which work well as part of a wider flower display. You also get the benefit of the sensational scent in the home. Picking blooms will also prevent mint self-seeding everywhere.
Radish
Bulbs can bolt quite easily, and those that have are not the best plants from which to save seed, so why not pick the flowers and use them in a display instead? Varieties produce a range of coloured flowers which work well alongside show-stopping bigger blooms.
Rocket
To keep your rocket from bolting, pick off the flowers and use them in the home. This will encourage the plant to keep producing lots more lovely peppery salad leaves in the process. The free flowers are a bonus and like all the other blooms outlined here, are edible as well.
Coriander
So pretty and delicate, coriander flowers work well as edging in a display vase. Coriander is another herb that likes to bolt readily in the summer months, so cutting the flowers and watering and mulching plants well will also encourage it to stand firm for further zesty pickings.
Lettuce
Do let some of your lettuce grow on and set seed because you get so much free seed from one plant alone. In the heat, lettuce will also try to reach for the sky and the unusual flower heads look great as part of a cut flower display.
Chive
What a beauty of a bloom! By snipping back your chive, it will further encourage new fresh growth in the process.
Florence fennel
If pushed, this has to be my all-time favourite centrepiece for a vegetable flower display. It demands to be centre stage with its frothy bright yellow flower head. Let plants grow on and they will dutifully appear and delight all who bask in their glory.
Blooms to leave to harvest next year
Parsley
As a biannual this delightful herb will flower and set seed in its second year and I say let it. The pretty blooms can be harvested, allowing some flower heads to set seed for lots of lovely seedlings for free in the process.
Carrot
Although trickier to save seed from, leave a few slightly knobbly or munched carrots in the ground over winter and watch as they grow and emerge to form the most stunning display the following year. You will not be disappointed.
Parsnip
Again, prepare yourself for show-stopping flower heads by leaving some roots in the ground till next year and you’ll be in for a treat as the flowers dutifully emerge.
Leek
We are all aware of the loveliness of ornamental alliums but in the second year leeks can also produce the most delightful centre blooms. I leave at least one leek in the ground per bed on the vegetable garden to allow plenty of opportunity for these most gorgeous of blooms.
Winter brassica
It doesn’t just have to be winter varieties but early in the year, the likes of kale, chard and purple sprouting broccoli will produce blooms which provide a valuable source of food for pollinators. So do leave some for them but if there is enough to go around they also make a pretty addition to flower displays.
These are just a few examples of the wider cut flower potential in the garden. Which are your favourite unusual cut flower pickings from the garden? Please do write in and let us know.
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