Garden planning: essential flowers for cutting year round

How to plant blooms for year-round cutting. Fill your house with fresh flower arrangements all through the winter, spring, summer and fall. You surely would laugh if anyone suggested that you could step outside your mountaintop chalet in the dead of winter to cut an armful of roses. Instead, camellia blossoms--a winter blossom similar in look and shape to a rose--can fill your winter vases while filling the floral void between the last holiday poinsettia and the first late-winter crocus. Unless you live in an extremely cold region, it's possible to enjoy year-round blooms without a trip to the florist; in fact, some consider flower arrangements essential to everyday living. Winter doesn't provide a plethora of blooms, but it provides just enough color to mix with winter foliage and berries to create a stunning display. Add a few dried and preserved summer flowers, force some spring bulbs and branches, and you can fill your home with the beauty and fragrance of fresh cut flowers throughout the year. The easiest way to ensure a year-round supply of flowers is to plant a special cutting garden. While cutting gardens are not essential, if you reserve a special garden for that purpose, you don't have to worry about creating holes in your well-designed garden beds. Plant your gardens, especially your cutting gardens, to take advantage of the unique offerings of each of the four seasons. Don't worry about design or complementary plants and colors in cutting gardens. You can easily plant four seasons' worth of flowers in the same bed for year-round pleasure. Spring flowers are so abundant that there's no need to confine your cutting to special gardens. Regardless of the season, use foliage, berries, and flowering shrub branches to add texture, height, and interest to arrangements. Steps to Creating a Cutting Garden 1. Plan four gardens, one for each season even if you will plant it all in the same space. 2. Include plants with long bloom times, and include a variety of sizes, shapes and colors: