Succession Planting in the Cutting Garden

Succession Planting means you plant out a space with a variety of plants that can grow together happily, give you more options to harvest for a greater length of time. It makes the most out of the space. When I design a garden I always think about what flowers will be blooming in each season.  When it comes to growing flowers as cut flowers this is important too. We only have limited space in which to plant the flowers for cutting so I really wanted to be able to have continuous blooms with minimal amount of time where the garden is bare and with the least amount of disturbance to the soil.

We won’t be digging the roots out of each plant or turning the soil over and then replanting. We will simply be cutting down the old foliage to ground level and then allowing the next season of flowers to grow.

The combination we have used in this bed is

Daffodils for flowers in late winter

Love in the Mist for flowers in spring/summer

Sunflowers for late summer/ early autumn

Zinnias for autumn

The daffodil will be left in the ground.  The Love in Mist tends to self seed so I will be sure not to pick all the flowers so it can regenerate the following year.  The Sunflowers and Zinnias will need to be replanted each year however I have been drying the seed heads of the spent flowers from this year so hope to reuse their seeds.

The raised bed where this combination of flowers are growing will be dedicated to just growing these species for the next few years until I decide to rotate the beds.