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For me, the real abundance in the cutting patch doesn’t arrive until the last week of August. Dahlias, cosmos, nicotiana and zinnias all hit their stride at once, and the patch stops being a series of hopeful moments and starts being an actual cutting garden.
Everything before that (sweet peas, I’m sorry, but it’s true) pales into insignificance.
I say this as someone who tries, every single year, to bring those flowers forward. Earlier sowings. Warmer starts. More coddling than any dahlia strictly deserves. And every year they arrive when they want to arrive, which is late August. So this year I’ve stopped fighting it quite so hard, and started paying proper attention to what’s actually happening in the months in between. Which, it turns out, already has a name gardeners use: the June gap.
What the June gap actually looks like in a cutting garden
Beekeepers coined the term first (there’s a genuine dip in nectar between spring blossom and summer flowers, and it matters enormously to bees), but any cutting gardener will recognise the shape of it instantly. Late June into mid July, the tulips are long gone, the sweet peas are getting tired, and the big August performers are still slowly building themselves underground or under leaf. From a distance the garden looks lush. Up close, snips in hand, you come back with three stems that don’t quite make a jug (I exaggerate of course, but it’s what it feels like).
Three questions. Two minutes. A flower list chosen for your actual garden, not some idealised one.
Let’s find your flowers.
It’s the gap between “the spring flowers are done” and “the August flowers haven’t started,” and if nobody warns you about it, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong. You’re not. It’s just the shape of the year.
Why it happens (and why abundance is worth waiting for)
Some of it is climate. Some of it is the particular flowers I lean on. But mostly it’s this: the plants that produce the biggest volumes are also the ones that need the longest runway. Dahlias spend most of the summer building themselves before they get generous with the flowers, and cosmos and zinnias aren’t far behind.
One flower on its own, in June, is a novelty. Four flowers all going at once, in late August, is a season. That’s the difference I’m chasing every year, and it lands when it lands.
What I’m actually trying this year to close the June gap
I don’t have this solved (that’s rather the point of writing it down), but here’s where my thinking has landed.
- Letting biennials and autumn sowings do the early lifting. Anything already established by June (biennials, whatever went in as an autumn sowing) gets a head start on the gap simply by already existing when it arrives.
- Adding one later spring sowing to keep things going. Rather than one big batch and hope, a second, smaller sowing a few weeks after the first should build something more continuous, instead of an early flush followed by not much at all.
- Trying a few more perennials (though this is a long game, not a fix yet). I sowed some this year, so they’re not doing anything for me yet, and here’s the slightly maddening bit: until they actually flower for the first time, I won’t know when in the season they’ll show up. This isn’t a solution to this year’s gap. It’s an experiment for three summers’ time, if it even works.
- Accepting the shape of my own year. This is the harder one. Instead of trying to make my June look like someone else’s June, I’m planning for a slower early summer and a bigger, later peak. Fewer flowers in the house in June. More of a slow build toward August.
Right now, in the middle of July, that’s roughly where I am. Larkspur, feverfew and sweet peas are having a proper moment (three things at once, which for mid July feels almost suspicious). The achillea’s looking jaded. The snapdragons have just been cut hard, so there’s a lull coming from them too, though they’ll be back before long.
None of that is revolutionary. It just means giving up on the idea that every month should look equally full, which is a fantasy I keep returning to, uninvited, roughly once a year.
What late-August abundance has taught me about the rest of the year
The funny thing about finally getting a proper flush of flowers is that it puts everything else in context. Those stems I was so pleased with in May and June? Lovely. But they were never going to be abundance. They were the opening act, not the show.
Once you accept that, the June gap stops feeling like the garden failing you and starts feeling like a garden that simply peaks late. You plan for that instead of fighting it. Which might mean fewer flowers in the house early on, and making peace with it. Or it might mean deliberately planting more of the flowers that actually want that awkward middle stretch (probably both, if I’m honest).
What flowers actually fill the June gap?
The ones I keep coming back to: sweet peas, picked properly and often; snapdragons; ammi; phlox; and a second, later sowing of cornflowers. None of it is exotic. It just means treating the June gap as its own season, worth planning for on purpose, rather than a slow patch to get through between two better ones.
I’m not sure I’ll ever fully close the gap between my quiet June and my late-August rush, and I’ve mostly made peace with that. Maybe that’s just the shape of my particular patch. Abundance, when it finally comes, feels more earned for the waiting.
If you’ve used the Flower Grower Companion app, you’ll already have a weekly list that quietly nudges you through the June gap (extra succession sowing reminders and all) without pretending there’s more to do than there actually is some weeks. If you haven’t, it might be worth a look before next year’s gap catches you out again.
A quick aside: I built a little app for flower growers who want gentle reminders about what to do and when - without it turning into another thing to feel guilty about. It's called the Flower Grower Companion. You tell it your location and your flowers, it tells you what actually needs doing this week (and just as importantly, when there's nothing to do at all)
Have a look
