Growing Cut Flowers: The Top 20 Trending Choices For Your Cut Flower Garden This Year

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Are you dreaming of growing cut flowers for your own cut flower garden so you can have fresh flowers in your home all season? You can do it with these tips for the best low-maintenance plants that give beautiful flowers for bouquets.

Have you ever dreamed of stepping into your backyard and snipping fresh flowers for a vase, right from your own garden? I know I have, and do! There’s something magical about walking along blooming flower beds full of your favorite colors, scissors in hand, picking the perfect stems for a bouquet. But here’s the thing—they don’t tell you how much work it can be to keep those blooms coming.

Some of the most gorgeous cut flowers? They are delicate little things that need to be dug up in winter or started from seed in a greenhouse every single year. I don’t have time for that (I have a farmhouse to renovate after all).

I’ve been dreaming about my flower garden since I moved to the new place. And I have it all worked out. The best choices for growing cut flowers in my cutting garden, that are low maintenance, give lots of flowers, and that I can make to come back year after year without much work from me.

Let me show you my plans and my favorite perennial plants that I am planting in my garden for lots of small and big bouquets. They all come back year after year—and still give beautiful, bouquet-worthy blooms without too much work.

Let’s make our gardens a low-maintenance flower factory. Check out my list of the top 20 flowers to grow in a cut flower garden.

Aster

These fall-flowering blooms are low-maintenance plants, great pollinators, and look striking as a solitary flower bouquet or used in a mixed floral arrangement.

Ranunculus

Ranunculus are also known as buttercups. The luscious bud of delicate petals has a rose-like quality. These flowers are vase favorites and ideal for the cutting garden.

I used them in my DIY spring wreath, and they lasted forever.

Peony

With a vase life of 7 to 10 days, peonies are perfect for cutting gardens. And they smell heavenly too! No garden of mine would be complete without at least a couple of peony bushes in my borders.

Anemone

Anemone flowers look a bit like poppy flowers, but they are much hardier in a bouquet. They look great as stand-out flowers, but they also mix well with other spring flowers like tulips. There are many varieties and some are really hardy perennials that keep flowering until winter.

I arranged them in cute mini bouquets of anemones and tulips in my DIY hanging glass bottles.

Roses

Roses thrive in full sun and rich soil, I expect they will grow very well here in our clay soil. The great thing is that the more you cut from your rose bushes, the more flowers they give. Win-win! Roses are classic and elegant, and come in many colors and varieties.

Still love the simplicity of my roses centerpiece with a farmhouse feel.

Zinnia

Ok, must be honest. Zinnias are not a perennial in my gardening zone. But they are so easy to seed and give such an abundance that I’ll make an exception. They come in a wide array of colors and are perfect for a cutting garden because they bloom just 60 days after planting. Zinnia are pollinator friends and do well in a vase.

You can also easily harvest the seeds for next year’s blooms.

Lilacs

I remember the day we got the keys to the farmhouse well. It was May, and the very first thing I noticed when I walked into my new garden, which was very bare and very neglected, was a tall bush full of lilac flowers (I snapped the photo you see here at that very moment). It was a long-time dream of mine to grow my own lilacs. And now I have three large bushes that bloom in May with the most fragrant flowers. They are a bit finicky to keep as cut flowers, but the bushes are so abundant with blooms that I still cut a lot of bouquets from them.

Dahlia

Dahlias usually are not treated as a perennial in my climate, the bulbs need to be dug up in winter. But…
I recently came across this video showing how to let dahlias overwinter in the soil. And I am so going to try that. Because my cut flower garden would just not be complete without them. They bloom from midsummer to the first frost, giving continuous flowers as long as you keep cutting them, and the dahlia flowers do really well in a vase.

Sunflower

Sunflowers are bright and cheerful. They are vase favorites in late summer and early fall. They can grow quite tall and provide a bold focal point in arrangements. They grow easily from big seeds that can be directly seeded into the soil.

See the beautiful sunflowers featured in a Fall Living Room Tour.

Lavender

Lavender provides a soft purple hue and a calming fragrance. It’s great for both fresh and dried arrangements. A lavender bush lasts for many years if you just remember to give it a haircut every year. It is also very easy to propagate new lavender plants yourself.

Lavender is a nice addition to mixed bouquets, but the flowers are also great for making a lovely and fragrant lavender wreath.

Cosmos

Cosmos are easy to grow from seed and offer delicate, daisy-like blooms. I simply sprinkle the seeds in a border in late spring, and they take care of themselves after that. They add a light, airy feel both to the borders in my garden as well as to bouquets. Cosmos comes in shades of white and pink, and I love them.

Tulip

Tulips are a springtime favorite with their bold, colorful blooms. They add a seasonal touch to bouquets. There are new varieties of tulips that have big flower heads that make them almost look like roses. Technically, it is best to dig tulips up in winter. But I have red tulips coming up year after year in my front garden. They were planted by the previous owners. So I treat them as perennials.

Loving my red tulips in this Farmhouse Tulips Centerpiece.

Sweet Pea

Oh, I love Sweet peas, they have a delightful fragrance and come in many shades. They’re perfect for adding a touch of scent. When growing sweet peas, you are obligated to cut many little bouquets from them. because it encourages the plant to keep ever more new flowers.

My neighbour grew them from seed last year and gifted me some. I wasn’t too careful in clearing them out in the fall, and this year I had spontaneous reseeding of sweet peas without any work on my part.

Snapdragons

Known for their tall spikes and vibrant colors, snapdragons are great for adding height to arrangements. And they are really easy perennials to grow in your cut flower garden.

Baby’s Breath

Baby’s breath blooms with a cloud of tiny white flowers that is great as a filler in bouquets but also looks quite beautiful on its own. I love these in my flower border in the garden too, because they add so much light and fluffiness.

Hydrangea

Hydrangeas have large, showy flowers that are perfect for making a statement in your arrangements. These flowers dry perfectly in a vase, once dried, they are crowd-pleasers in fall arrangements.

Hydrangea featured in a coastal-style bedroom design.

Lady’s Mantle

Lady’s Mantle is an easy and wonderful perennial garden plant that blooms with clouds of yellow/green flowers. It is very easy to grow, will seed itself, and the flowers are great neutrals in mixed bouquets.

Lady’s mantle and roses in a teapot flower arrangement.

Coneflower

Coneflowers, also well known by their Latin name Echinacea, are tough garden favorites and long-lasting cut flowers. Their daisy-like flowers come with a central cone that lasts all winter and can add interest to a fall arrangement. The flowers have medicinal purposes too.

Phlox

Phlox produces clusters of small, fragrant flowers. They are ideal for adding scent and color to your arrangements.

Gladiolus

I just had to add Gladioli too because I love their tall flower spikes, and they are available in a range of colors. They add drama to any bouquet. But these summer bulbs are definitely not winter hardy in my climate zone, but the bulbs can be dug out to overwinter and be replanted in the spring. Maybe I’ll plant some bulbs when I have more time.

So? Have I convinced you yet? Are you going to plant your own cut flower garden?

I am slowly adding more and more of these plants to my garden, so that hopefully my garden and my house can be ready at the same time. I am starting with the easiest ones from this list, and it is good to know that none of them are truly time-consuming flowers to grow in my cut garden.

Don’t forget to pin this post about cut flower garden tips to your garden board on Pinterest for later reference.

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