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Creating a cutting garden layout is a wonderful way to bring beauty and freshness to your home through sustainable seasonal flower gardening. Whether you want to decorate your house or sell at the local market, determining the right size for your garden can be a complex decision.
On average, an ideal size for a cutting garden producing a weekly bouquet is 3mx3m. You can, however, adjust the size based on your specific requirements. The space needed for a cutting garden ultimately depends on the number of flowers you want to produce.
To ensure success, it's crucial to carefully consider the size and location of your new garden. While you can incorporate cut flowers into your existing garden, creating a dedicated stand-alone patch helps define your requirements.
The larger the area, the more plants and variety you can grow. If you have a smaller site, you'll need to plan for successional planting to ensure a continuous supply of flowers.
Here are some tips to help you select the perfect location and determine the space available for your cutting garden layout.
Cutting garden requirements
When you're first starting out, you'll only need a small space for your cutting patch, which is surprisingly easy to set up. It's not a traditional garden, but rather a dedicated patch specifically for cut flowers. The great thing about this patch is that you don't have to worry about how it looks after you've picked the flowers.
To find the perfect spot for your new garden, take into account a few important factors. Start by considering factors such as soil quality and drainage, sun and wind exposure, and access to water.
Weather conditions
Ideally, choose an area that receives at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day during the peak growing season (April-September in the northern hemisphere). You can still grow plants in shadier areas, but keep in mind that the variety of flowers you can grow may be limited if all you have is shade.
To start off, I suggest finding a spot for your garden that is protected from the wind. Wind can be a challenge for flower gardeners as it can quickly flatten your precious plants. It’s surprising how many windy days there are in summer in the UK, and you can bet it happens when you haven’t yet staked your plants.
If your chosen spot is windy, avoid building a solid wall as a windbreak. The wind will hit the wall, crash down, and flatten most plants except the toughest ones. Instead, consider using a trellis or hedging to soften the effects of the wind.
Soil conditions
Additionally, make sure the soil is free draining. Plants generally don't thrive in waterlogged soils or overly dry conditions. In a flower garden, the emphasis is very much on flower production; to produce the most number of flowering stems in the smallest space.
However, I will caveat that with if you are using the no-dig approach, then adding a regular mulch of compost will improve your soil structure in no time. And as you are planting into the compost layer then, the underlying soil structure isn’t so much of a problem.
Access
Finally, the location you choose should also be convenient for you to access. This includes within easy distance of water and your compost bins to make your life as easy as possible.
Space requirements for your cutting garden layout
Once you find your spot, it's important to determine the space you have and how much you need for planning your new cutting garden layout. Understanding your needs from the beginning will help you determine the size of your cutting garden.
How much time do you have?
One of the most important factors to consider is the amount of time you have available to tend the garden. Even if you have the space to create a large cutting garden, it's essential to start with a plot that you know you can easily manage within your available time. If you make it bigger than what you can handle, you might quickly become overwhelmed, and it suddenly won't be enjoyable anymore.
How do you want to use the flowers?
The second factor to consider is the quantity of flowers you desire. For example, do you want to have a fresh bouquet for your house every week, or do you need more or less?
Knowing how you want to use the flowers, and how often, significantly affects the amount of space you will need. Someone who wants bouquets for multiple rooms every week will have much higher flower stem requirements compared to someone who is satisfied with a single bunch every few weeks.
What flower varieties do you want to grow?
Finally, if you have specific flower varieties you want to grow, this may also impact the garden size you need. For example, if a flower variety takes a long time from germination to bloom, then you need space to grow that plant, even while it is not productive. In addition, some flower plants take up a lot of room to get the best out of them.
For example, dahlias are often staples of a cut flower garden. And who doesn't love their glorious blousy flowers? However, you can only fit about 4 tubers in 1m2. They will also need to be in that space for at least six months of the year. All this whilst only producing flowers in abundance in the final few months. You then have the added hassle of storing them over winter.
Meanwhile, you could fill that same space with 5 scabiosa, 3 ammi majus, 5 cerinthe major and 5 zinnias and get flowers consistently from June to October, with no storage issues.
How many plants can you fit into the space?
A great cutting garden layout is an area covering about 9m2 (3m x 3m). This doesn't need to be in one big block but can be broken down into smaller beds to give you the same area.
If you can spare this size, you'll have ample space for about fifteen sweet peas, five cosmos, five dahlias, five sunflowers, and five cornflowers, along with some roses and a handful of herbs. This will keep you going all summer.
If you have more space, then you can grow more varieties.
When working out how many plants I can squeeze into my cutting garden, I work in 1m2. Generally, you can fit about 25 plants into that area (depending on the final size of the plant). This is assuming ‘most’ annuals only need a 20cm spacing between each plant. Essentially, you could say for every 1m2 that you have available, you can plant 25 plants. It’s surprising how close you can grow the flowers in a cutting garden, especially if you regularly apply a layer of compost to feed the soil.
At a minimum, a patch of 2m x 1m is all you need to start. Use 1 metre for active cutting; the other half will grow the plants for the next succession. The area will swap back and forth as the season continues. However, you cannot expect weekly bouquets with a plot this size. There may be a balancing act between what is ready to be harvested and creating an abundant bunch of flowers.
If you have an additional main garden to supplement your bunches with some additional foliage and perennial flowers, this will be a great help.
Space calculations for seeds to bouquets
Sometimes you have no choice about the size and location of your plot, but if you have the freedom to decide on the size of your patch, there are a few calculations you can use to determine what you need.
You can calculate how many plants you need by working backwards from what you want to produce.
- Let's assume one abundant bunch of flowers will require 30 stems. How many bunches do you want a month? If you require four bunches a month (during the growing season), you need 120 stems per month.
- Some plants are cut and come again. Some provide more than one cutting stem before the plant is finished, and some can only be cut once. Let's assume you are taking advantage of the cut and come again (cosmos, zinnias, dahlias) and the multi-stem varieties (ammi majus, cornflowers, phlox). Depending on the plant, let's assume you get at least six stems per plant at any time without stressing the plant. To get 120 stems a month means you need as few as 20 plants (120/6).
- Assuming we can fit in 25 plants per 1m2, you only need 1m2 to provide you with four abundant bunches of flowers a month.
This calculation is very much finger in the air, as it doesn't allow for variation in your flower arrangements and the quantity that fits in the space varies slightly depending on the flower varieties you choose.
I have to say having a continuous supply of flowers in just 1m2, is going to be challenging, as you may find everything is in flower all at once and then you have to wait a couple of weeks until the flowers are ready again.
If the plants are mainly cut and come again, then you will need sufficient plants to make sure each plant has enough time to recover before taking another cutting.
If you choose plants with limited cutting stems, you will need to ensure a succession of plants are ready to take over once the current plants are finished.
All I can guarantee is, once you start growing, and then you start looking at seed catalogues, you will never have enough space!
Finding the right balance
The above calculation shows that if you organise your sowings, you don't need much space for a cutting garden.
However, the more area you have will buy you a bit of wriggle room for when things go wrong (and they will) and provide more varieties and options for you to grow.
Learn more about how to start and grow a cut flower garden in this series of blog posts:
- The 9 Benefits of Starting a Cutting Garden
- How to Start a Cut Flower Garden – 7 easy steps
- What’s the Best Cutting Garden Layout: How Much Space Do You Need?
- The Tools You Need to Create a Cut Flower Garden
- Cutting Garden Plan: What Makes a Good Cut Flower Garden
- When to Start a Cut Flower Garden For Beginners
- How to Grow Flowers For Cutting: Flower Bed Maintenance
- Flower Bed Maintenance: A Guide To Watering
And if you want to do it with the minimum of trouble find out the mistakes I made in starting my flower patch.
If you are ready to buy your seeds I have all of the easy cut flower seeds to grow in my shop (aff). Shop Now
