Eric welcomes Rachel and wants to talk about cut flowers for the garden. Which flowers are going to perform best and what are some some tips on how we can be better in our own home gardens with cut flowers. First Rachel talks about Zinnias - They are one of the great cut flowers we can use in our garden, in your landscape or in containers. They're great pollinators, attract butterflies and bees. What are some of the qualifications for a great garden plant that will also make a great cut flower? When looking a plant that will also be a great cut flower look for a plant that has a rigid, woody stem, one that will stand up on its own, a plant that isn't very succulent that so that when you cut it stands up and maintains itself in the vase. Another advantage to zinnias is if we were to take the flower off the stem now the lowers buds will push back out and will get additional blooms whereas many other plants, say a camellia, if we were to cut that flower off that was the only flower that would grow in that space for that season. But plants like zinnia, rudbeckia, even many echinacea will send up additional buds meaning we're not losing our one shot at a bloom on that plant. That's a good thing about zinnias they keep coming back and they last from the beginning of summer until possibly the end of September.
By Dan Heims, President, Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Photographs courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Terra Nova’s breeders have created a series of outstanding world-class echinaceas that are consistent in size, bloom power, color intensity and are a pollinator buffet. What’s not to like.
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