Backyard Garden: Cutting Garden
The purpose of the Cutting Garden is to demonstrate varieties of annuals and perennials used for flower bouquets. In addition the flowers grown in the cutting garden are donated to local food pantries along with other vegetables and fruits from the Backyard Garden.
Points of Interest:
- We planted 12 trays of 50 cells each in the greenhouse and appreciate how much money it saved. Using plants from seed provided a good variety of flowers to make our bouquets attractive and demonstrate what is possible to grow in this area.
- Our bed of Orlaya white finch lace flourished this Spring. We planted it for the first-time last year and this year it has tripled in size. This flower is a great addition to a bouquet as it has a vase life of 7 to 10 days. The more you cut, the more it blooms and from early Spring through Summer. As the flowers fade, they will form green seed heads with star shaped pods that can be dried.
- Poppy seeds were added to one bed last Spring, and they reseeded and spread over the winter. While not a great cutting flower they were beautiful and brought us joy as we work in the beds when not much else is blooming. Poppies also produce great seed heads that we will dry and use in bouquets later this summer.
- We have 3 new containers that we have planted with decorative grass and millet. These were planted in a container, so they do not get out of control and will make attractive filler for our bouquets.
- This year we will be experimenting with drying flowers which we hope to use for small bouquets or fun projects if we have children visit on a field trip. Some of these flowers are Strawflowers, Love in a Mist, Statice, Scabiosa, Gomphrena, Yellow Drumsticks sometimes called Billy Buttons, and Zinnias.
- We are using Hortonova netting in one of our beds. This netting creates a 6” by 6” open grid to place plants uniformly and will support flowers with long stems or heavy heads. The netting is sitting on the ground as we plant and then will be moved up the end posts 8-12 inches to support our flowers as they grow. In this bed we have Dahlias, Zinnias, Euphorbia, Sunflowers, and Celosia.
- Some other flowers that we are growing include Larkspur, Celosia, Gomphrena, Salvia, Iris, Gladiolus, Lisianthus, Snapdragons, Canterbury Bells, Bells of Ireland, Dusty Miller, Feverfew, Sunflowers, and Coneflowers. We have a beautiful clematis that returns each spring and morning glories started from seeds for our obelisk.
Garden Address: 35230 W 135th St
Olathe, KS 66061
Master Gardeners are available to answer questions and provide tours while they work the gardens Wednesday mornings, March to October. To schedule a visit on another day (M-F), please contact us at bygjocoemg@gmail.com
For all garden questions, contact our Hotline at 913-715-7050 or Email: garden.help@jocogov.org