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)

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