Cutting garden is a snip — er, snap

Until recently my idea of the perfect cutting garden had always been a place where someone else — your grandmother, spouse, partner or professional gardener — went to plant and gather flowers, bring them into the house and then arrange, maintain and dispose of them when spent. It all simply seemed too laborious — especially when a good florist was readily at hand. Then three random events conspired to demonstrate the wisdom of growing my own cutting garden.

First, a thorough review of my household budget led to the shocking revelation that I was spending a fortune on fresh flowers — more each year than I spent on almost any other garden-related item.

Second, I was introduced to several leading floral designers, who showed me that arranging flowers need be no more daunting than any other form of self-expression — simply get in there, experiment and have fun.

Third, and most important, I discovered some simple design precepts that revealed how to make growing a cutting garden practical, cost-effective and enjoyable.

At its simplest, a cutting garden is just that — a plot that provides fresh flowers for cutting. Why, you may ask, is such a thing even necessary — wouldn't your existing ornamental beds serve perfectly well?

The answer is no. Correctly designed and laid out, an ornamental border is an intricate interweaving of an integrated whole, where each plant depends on its neighbors, both in flower and foliage, to reinforce and enhance the border garden's overall effect throughout the season. And when you regularly remove part of the picture by cutting, the whole canvas is destroyed.

So, if you want to cut a fresh bouquet for the house or to share with friends every few days, you'll need a separate space from which to take your flowers: That's precisely where a practical and pleasurable cutting garden comes in.

Design and layout

Like its cousin the vegetable garden, the cutting garden should be a utilitarian space. Cutting gardens can be quite beautiful, but that's not their purpose.

Many of us worry that a cutting garden must function as both ornamental border and flower larder. But if you place your cutting garden in a sunny out-of-the-way spot where it won't need to compete with your ornamental beds or borders, you free yourself up to "farm."

Cutting gardens are meant for the harvesting of flowers as a crop, so they should be laid out with easily workable beds not more than four feet or so across, with access from either side to facilitate cultivation and cutting.