Colorful cuts

By definition, a cutting garden provides armloads of flowers for indoor arrangements. But the pleasure begins well before the harvested blooms cross your doorstep. Instead, the most successful cut-flower gardens appear as gigantic bouquets outdoors first.

To create such spectacular results in your own yard, start by considering your favorite colors, scents and shapes. Balance your top picks with what will work best inside your home, whether that's subtle pastels; bright pinks and purples; or bold yellows, reds and oranges.

Also weigh your indoor style.

If your home is casual or country, look to daisy shapes and billowy blossoms. If your decor is formal or traditional, select single-stemmed flowers to carefully arrange. If you tend toward contemporary, consider ornamental grasses or bold, tropical foliage and flowers.

Once you've narrowed your choices to a particular scheme, it's easier to select the perfect flowers to fit, both indoors and out.

The Site

Cutting flowers can be planted in a designated plot, just like how you might grow your vegetables. Or you can work in the plants among the rest of your garden. Unless you harvest massive quantities all at once, there's little danger that clipping a few flowers will detract from the outdoor display.

Either way, the site should receive plenty of sunshine and be within easy reach of water. In addition, the soil should be especially fertile and drain well. That's because many cut flowers are annuals, which run through their entire life cycle in a single season. As a result, they draw tremendous energy out of the soil in a short time.

In my garden, the soil is mostly heavy clay. So I grow dahlias, iris, snapdragons and the like in raised vegetable beds filled with loose soil, compost and other organic matter. The flowers look pretty among the vegetables, and the diversity attracts beneficial insects.

The Flowers

If you like a particular combination of plants in your nursery cart, it's sure to look good in the garden as well as in a vase.

Start by choosing several dominant colors -- such as deep purple, soft pink or even bright red. Next, look for other plants that bloom in lighter or darker shades of the same color, followed by plants that bloom in complementary colors. Strict color theory calls for pairing red with green; blue with orange; and yellow with purple. But in the world of horticulture, flower colors don't always fit neat definitions.

Finally, for a crisp or unifying accent, choose a few plants that bloom in white, along with plants that bear wispy, filler foliage; bold, glossy green foliage; or velvety silvery foliage.

Or short-cut the process by selecting a single variety of flowers that blooms in a range of colors, such as dahlias, roses, snapdragons or zinnias.

Whatever you choose, look for flowers that bloom on stems long enough to arrange in a vase. Consider the following.

Daisy-like flowers: Goldie bidens (Bidens ferulifolia 'Bidens'), Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maximum), yellow coreopsis (Coreopsis grandiflora), cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus), dahlia (Dahlia -- bush or bedding), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella), sunflower (Helianthus annuus), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), pincushion flower (Scabiosa columbaria) and zinnia (Zinnia angustifolia).

Spiky flowers: delphinium (Delphinium elatum), foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), lavender (Lavandula), border penstemon (Penstemon x. gloxinioides) and sage (Salvia).

Domed flowers: spider flower (Cleome hasslerana), heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens), bigleaf or mop-top hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) and throatwort (Trachelium caeruleum).

Wispy, flowering fillers: Santa Barbara daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus), species geraniums, nemesia (Nemesia caerulea), purpletop verbena (Verbena bonariensis) and Cedros Island verbena (Verbena lilacina 'De la Mina').

Foliage fillers: ornamental grasses, such as hairy awn muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) and fountain grass (Pennisetum); licorice plant, for its soft, fuzzy gray or chartreuse leaves (Helichrysum petiolare or Helichrysum 'Limelight'); scented geraniums, for their fancy leaves (Pelargonium); heavenly bamboo, for interesting texture and autumn colors (Nandina domestica); blue oat grass and New Zealand flax, for colorful sword-like leaves (Helictotrichon sempervirens and Phormium); and camellias, citrus and magnolia trees for glossy leaves that provide a clean, green background.

The Harvest

To harvest cut flowers and foliage at their peak, go into the garden in early morning, just as the dew begins to dry. The stems, leaves and flowers will be at their freshest, and foraging bees will not have had time to pollinate the newly opening blooms. (Once pollinated, a flower starts to form seed and is not likely to last as long in a vase.)

Carry a bucket of tepid water with you. Look for buds that are just beginning to unfurl. Select only the most perfect. Cut the stems longer than their eventual length in the arrangement and immediately plunge them into the bucket. Cut each stem at an angle to increase the surface area that the flower has available to take up the water. Keep the bucket in the shade while you're working.

Bring the flowers indoors and store them in a cool, dark place for half a day before arranging. Back in the garden, keep dead-heading the flowers that did not make the cut, in order to prolong the bloom.

Tips for arranging cut flowers:

* Always use a clean container.

* Use bottled or distilled water.

* Fill the vase at least halfway before starting, so that you can keep the stems moist as you complete the bouquet.

* Add a commercial preservative, a few drops of bleach or several teaspoons of lemon-lime soda (not diet) to extend the life of the arrangement.

* Strip any leaves that will sit beneath the surface so that they won't foul the

water.

* Make a fresh, diagonal cut on each stem before placing it in the arrangement.

* If your flowers are short, first add pebbles or marbles to the vase.

* If the container's mouth is too wide, slip a piece of crumpled chicken wire inside to help hold the flowers in place.

* Top off narrow-necked vases with a kitchen bulb baster to avoid spills.

* Plants with medium to tall stiff stems are easiest to arrange. If your flowers bloom on short stems, float them in a shallow dish.

Joan S. Bolton is a local free-lance writer and garden designer. Her In the Garden column appears biweekly. She can be contacted through her Web site: santabarbaragardens.com.

May 7, 2008