▷ Flowers for bouquets: what to grow especially for harvesting

You can grow flowers for bouquets in your garden – you don’t need florists or shops, you will always have interesting plants to look at and give to friends. How and where flowers for bouquets can be grown, we talk to Angelina Kurauskiene, owner of the cut plant farm “Gėlių upė”. By clicking here you can listen to our conversation, broadcast in March in the “Plant Enthusiasts” program of “Žiniai Radio” – the conversation in the second section:

Lina Liubertaitė: Do people reserve a separate area in the ground for growing flowers for bouquets?

Angelina Kurauskienė: Dedicating a separate place for a flowerbed on your own plot is not very popular yet, but lately there is a trend that more and more people collect flowers and bring them home. For example, the English encourage people to set up separate beds for picking flowers. It is a shame to collect flowers grown in a common flower garden – you can see the gap.

For this purpose, a working bed is best suited, where plants grow for harvesting and propagation. Our grandmothers also had similar flowerbeds in their gardens. Therefore, if you are still creating, you can definitely designate a temporary bed for bouquets.

Which flowers are best for bouquets?

Lina: Would you recommend setting up a temporary bed? Is it because the best flowers to pick are annuals?

Angelina: Yes, the most suitable flowers for harvesting are annual ones. Since the flowering period of perennial flowers is very short, it is not worth growing them for harvesting. And many annuals have the characteristic that the more you cut them, the more shoots they produce, and therefore the more flowers they have.

Flowers for bouquets must respect certain rules. First of all, the best flowers are those that are easy to plant, easy to care for, and that bloom or live a long time. The elements of the bouquet are not only flowers, but also greenery and structural and airy elements.

Plant ideas

First the bouquet is composed main rings. Suitable here:

Cosmea or linelli – the more you cut, the more it flowers, lasts up to a week when harvested.
Zinnias/zinnias – are back in fashion, new interesting varieties have been bred, a large selection of colors. It blooms for a long time and lasts a long time
The dahlia is a tuberous flower. It’s back in fashion, it will be a real top in the next five years. There are currently many varieties, heights and colors of dahlias. Flowering lasts from mid-July until the first frost. The shape of the dahlia allows you to satisfy the structural needs of the bouquet, without even having to look for other flowers. Dahlias are not expensive. If you don’t have the opportunity to dig them up in the fall and store them until spring, you can purchase new tubers each spring. Dahlias are suitable for growing in pots.

Plant mixes are available in stores. The mixture sown in the flowerbed looks chaotic, while it is quite convenient to grow it in a flowerbed, but Angelina emphasizes that one should not choose a mixture, because the mixture contains flowers of different sizes, some are already growing, others have not yet sprouted, so those that have grown earlier will overshadow those that have not sprouted.

Smaller flowers – support rings:

Dill: their inflorescences perform the function of elegance and last a long time in the bouquet;
Basil – suitable for bouquets when the stem starts to grow and when the plant has inflorescences;
Mint: not only green, but also fragrant. Mint should be grown carefully due to its aggressive expansion – in pots or in a separate place, e.g. raised bed;
Burnotis: performs the function of greenery in the bouquet. The more you prune, the more shoots it produces and gradually it becomes a bush. Beetroot is sown in May. directly into the ground: you just have to wait until the soil warms up to 18 degrees. Therefore, if there is the possibility, it is better to sow in pots;
Toothpick (lat. Ammi visnaga) is a very beautiful plant during flowering, its lower part is green, and the upper part is white. When they flower and dry, the inflorescences are suitable for dry bouquets;
Buckwheat: Can be sown into the ground every few weeks. It is a great filler in a bouquet. Small flower, green lower petals;
Decorative or wild carrots. Wild – white, decorative – burgundy. Provides good shade in an autumn bouquet. A burgundy carrot looks chic with a peach dahlia.

Modern flowers for bouquets

Lina: Is it true that openwork plants and umbrella inflorescences are used to make the bouquet look modern? In our flower gardens does naturalistic design prevail, new forms – or similar in bouquets?

Angelina: Modern florists and designers try to use as many natural and dried plants as possible. It’s a trend linked both to climate change and to the idea that as many things as possible should be natural. Even the bouquets are dominated by the naturalistic style.

By the way, in the past they were not so popular. Everyone could grow up, everyone saw their grandmother in kindergarten, so they associated themselves with a poor flower. However, when the environment becomes urbanized, people gradually turn to nature, they want to reproduce nature both in the environment and in a bouquet of flowers on the table.

Flowers for bouquets as a company

Lina: Your activities are interesting and unconventional. I meet more and more people who think it would be fun to grow flowers, spend time in nature, surrounded by flowers and buds. It all seems so romantic. How much romance is there, how much moonlighting?

Angelina: Yes, there are more and more people who want to work with plants. Working on a flower farm is both romantic and tough. I have more romance than my husband. Growing vegetables and growing flowers can be equally romantic. If the motivation is high, there is also a lot of romance. But if we focus more on the monetary side, the romance diminishes more and more.

On our farm we grow around 60 different types of plants, or around 200 varieties. Our goal is to provide florists with as many different plants as possible so they can create freely. However, controlling such a composition is really difficult.

We follow sustainable principles on the farm, but sometimes this gets in the way: getting funding is quite difficult, because EU support is concentrated on greenhouse cultivation. But it’s much more fun to grow outdoors.

And finally:

We value Lithuanian cut flowers instead of imported ones, we support local business initiatives. These small family-run farms contribute with their work to creating a more sustainable environment and can also decorate our bouquets with interesting plants.