Beneficial Landscapes: Plants for a Cutting Garden
Karma Larsen, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, plantnebraska.org
Some of us love bringing flowers indoors. Even in summer, when there’s an abundance outdoors, having them before you on the breakfast table makes for a wonderful start to the day. Some gardeners use the gathering of cuts as motivation to do less-favored duties; after the perennial bed is weeded or after the kitchen is cleaned… flowers can be cut and brought indoors for a bouquet.
On days when it’s too hot, too rainy, too cold, or too busy, they bring the outdoors in, along with some fresh air and fragrance. And while outdoors, it can take a lot of plants, and large blossoms, to make an impact, indoors, the tiniest of flowers tucked into the base of a small saltshaker can brighten a counter or tabletop.
Almost all plants are worthy of a closer look, including many we don’t think of as vase-worthy. The leaves of hosta, Solomon’s seal, coralbells, lady’s mantle, brunnera, and other “primarily foliage” plants are amazingly long-lived, and they can provide filler for flowers that are in shorter supply. Vines like Virginia creeper, clematis, bittersweet, English or other ivies, periwinkle, grapevine, and wintercreeper offer similar filler and delicate trailing vines to spread out around the vase.
Annuals are all about blooming. Mid-summer landscape plants for cutting include alliums, baby’s breath, beebalm, black-eyed Susan, blazing star, coneflower, coreopsis, pincushion flower, roses, salvia, and yarrow. Pansies, tobacco plants (Nicotiana), cosmos, zinnia, lantana, and many more are happy for the deadheading and do well as cuts.
In fall, aster, sedum, goldenrod, sunflower, toad lily, and turtlehead can be brought indoors to give them more attention. For drying: feverfew, amaranth, lavender, baby’s breath, and hydrangea. For seedheads, good selections include flue false indigo, poppy, Mexican hat coneflower, and milkweed.
Trees and shrubs can be more finicky. Cuttings from some of them wilt almost immediately upon cutting, but viburnum, forsythia, lilac, fruit trees, and many others offer wonderful options for bouquets. A few that offer attractive branching or foliage include willow, dogwood, redbud, deutzia, camellia, witch hazel, hibiscus, and hydrangea.
Almost without exception, plants’ complex form and beauty deserve more than a glance. Bringing them to eye level is one way to enjoy them better. And would we instead get that closer look while we’re weeding around them or by having them on our desks and tables?