One of the built in conflicts of gardening is a love of flowers - in
the garden and in the house. A carefully planned garden can be stripped
bare to provide flowers for the arranging half of the schizoid gardener.
This is a problem for the landscaping half. This split personality can be
positively dealt with in a number of ways.
OR my favorite
A cutting garden is designed to be plucked and denuded; conflict
solved.
Here's How:
Select a site that is in full sun but out of the way if possible. Flowers
grow best in sun but cutting gardens are not always attractive. It can be
as large or as small as you can afford in terms of time and space. Amend
the soil if needed, flowers like a soil high in organic matter. Consider
building a raised bed of some sort, it allows for more intensive
cultivation. Use plants that produce lots of flowers which also have a long
vase life. Sometimes these plants' habits are not that attractive outside
of the actual flower. Other times they will be duplicates of your
landscaped specimens. It doesn't matter in the cutting garden. We are
going for flowers here, not form. Develop a mind set that these flowers are
for PICKING and be happily ruthless.
Some of my favorite cutting garden flowers (for USA zone 7)