Plant these flowers to get bountiful bouquets from your cutting garden this summer.

There’s just something about fresh cut flowers, isn’t there? I love having my own cut flower garden to pull flowers from during the summer. Below, you’ll find my list of the best cut flowers to grow in your own cutting garden. You’ll be overflowing with gorgeous bouquets all summer!

‘Tis the season for getting those cutting gardens started!

Our garden is prepped and just waiting on seeds to be planted. We’ve started some seeds already in containers, but it’s supposed to get cold here again this week, so I’ve held off on getting them in the ground. I’m not too worried about it though. I didn’t get anything in the ground until May last year and still had plenty of beautiful flowers. When will you be planting your seeds and flowers where you’re at?

My cut flower garden is like therapy for me. It’s hard work – especially in the beginning, but getting out there and working in the soil, planting flowers, pulling weeds and watching it all come to life really helps to calm my soul. It’s something I do for me. There were a few years when I said I just didn’t have time to do the garden. Well a couple years back, I decided I was going to make time for it once more and let me just tell you, I didn’t realize how much I missed it and how much it helped me mentally. It’s a really great escape.

I’m certainly not a master gardener. I learn more every year and am constantly referring to a 900 page gardening book from the 1960s that my great uncle handed down to me. I have found quite a few “surefire” cut flowers though – ones that have grown well for me and are easy to start out with if you’re new to this cutting garden thing.

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Best Flowers for Cutting Garden

I’m going to break this down into two different types of cutting garden flowers: annuals and perennials. You’ll have to plant annuals every year, but perennials will come back each year.

Like I said, these are flowers I’ve grown myself and had success with. There are many more varieties of cut flowers, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable suggesting them to you if I haven’t had success with them myself. That being said, if you’ve had success with other types of cut flowers, please do leave them in the comments for the rest of us to give a try!

And if you’re new to growing a cutting garden, then here’s my cut flower garden guide for beginners.

Best Annual Flowers for Cutting

Zinnias

You can never ever ever go wrong with Zinnias. Not only are zinnias, in my opinion, one of the prettiest annual flowers that are out there, they are one of the easiest to grow and provide blooms all summer long. A few of my personal favorite varieties of Zinnias include:

• Big Red – gorgeous deep red blooms with a long vase life.

• Envy – lime green blossoms that are perfect for bright colorful, summer arrangement.

• Cut and Come Again Mix – these are exactly what their name implies! The more you cut them, the more they come back with more blooms.

• Purple Prince – these purple flowers are another favorite of mine. It pairs nicely with the envy zinnias as well.

Growing from seed is easy with Zinnias. They can be started early indoors or planted right into the ground after the danger of the last frost. I’ve had success both ways.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are another foolproof cut flower. There are the huge varieties, which are great for photo backdrops, but my favorites for cutting are:

• Sunflower Busy Bee – traditional look sunflowers, but not the super tall ones. These get about 3′ – 4′ feet tall.

• Teddy Bear Sunflowers – I planted these for the first time last year and am completely hooked now. These double flowering sunflowers have a cushion like look and are gorgeous. The first picture in this post is of a teddy bear sunflower.

Amaranthus

I planted Amaranthus seeds for the first time last year after having gotten a few in a wildflower packet of seeds and loved them. I love the weeping, drapey look these add to arrangements. I’ve planted two different colors of these beauties:

• Love Lies Bleeding – a gorgeous deep garnet color.

• Green – this light green hue is the perfect compliment to brightly colored flowers.

Gomphrena

I planted these sweet little flowers for the first time last year and I adore them. They are great filler flowers for larger or medium sized arrangements, but also look precious solo. These get about 24 – 30 inches tall.

• QIS Mix – this is the mix of Gomphrena I planted last year and had great success with. I’m planning to give this Strawberry Fields and Fireworks variety a whirl this year too. They look too pretty not to!

Gerbera Daisies

I won’t lie, these can be difficult to get going. But if you live in the south and can get these to take root, then they can actually become perennials. That’s how I had success with mine. I didn’t get many blooms that first summer, but the following one, it wasn’t too bad! I’ve found it’s best to buy these as plants instead of seeds. These flowers have long stems as well. A couple of my favorites are Gerbera Glow and these with pink petals and yellow centers, which I like to call Pink Lemonade.

Best Perennial Flowers for Cutting

Perennial flowers will come back year after year and tend to get bigger and bigger each year. Here are few of my favorites.

Hydrangeas

I absolutely adore hydrangeas. They are my favorite flower and Grunt even planted a whole row of them for me at one of our houses. There are loads of different hydrangea varieties to choose from here.

Gladiolus

These are bulbs that you can plant in the spring and bloom in the summer. There is a taller variety and a shorter one:

• Fordhook Ruffled Pastel Mix – these are the taller variety and the ones that have done extremely well for me in my garden.

• Butterfly – these are a shorter variety of Glads. My mother-in-law planted some of these last year and they are beautiful.

Rudbeckia (Black Eyed Susans)

You’ve really got to love these flowers to plant them. Because once you do, they will just multiply over and over every year. Of course, you can always pull up the flowers from anywhere that you don’t want them. They are very drought tolerant as well and easy to grow. Find them here.

Echinacea (Coneflowers)

Coneflowers are similar to Black Eyed Susans in that they will multiply year after year. I prefer Coneflowers to Black Eyed Susans. As these grow over the years, you can also divide them and plant in other places as well. I’ve had great success with this Deep Rose variety.

Don’t forget – share your suggestions for good cutting flowers in the comments!

Looking for more ways to get “growing” outside? Take a look at these:

Cedar Planter Box – DIY this planter and add house numbers to it for killer curb appeal!

DIY Flamingo Sprinkler – who knew watering the garden could look so cool?

Flower Pot Ideas – Out-of-the-box creative ideas for planting flowers.

Want to remember this list of flowers for later? Just pin the image below!

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