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My Eight Favorite Summer Cut Flowers

A bouquet of summer dahlias and China asters will beautify any vase.

It’s always nice when the prettiest summer flowers can be cut and brought indoors for long-lasting arrangements. Aside from beauty and long vase life, several criteria make a flower suited to cutting. Long-stemmed, showy flowers of all sizes in unique and brilliant colors make the cut (pun intended). I also like heavy bloomers, so there are enough flowers to share with the bees and butterflies. Fragrance is another bonus.

My list contains a mix of flowering shrubs, perennials, and annuals that are most prevalent in the garden from mid to late summer. Some will flower until frost. When planting a garden with future cutting in mind, choose flowers that combine well in colors that please you.

Get Your Vases Ready

Match your flowers to your favorite vases and dot the house with them. (Image by Jessie Keith)

If you love cut flowers enough to grow them, you are likely an avid vase collector like me. My collection includes vases of all colors and sizes. (Click here to read my article about miniature flower arranging (many mini vases are shown).) It’s always good to have several large, medium, and small vases in various colors to show off your prized blooms. Just remember that colorful vases can compete with colorful arrangements. It’s better to choose flowers in monochromatic or neutral color schemes for multicolored vases. Neutral vases will best show off an extravagant collection of pretty flowers.

My Eight Favorite Summer Cut Flowers

All eight flowers are sun-lovers that grow best in fertile soil. Before planting, it helps to amend garden beds with Black Gold® Natural & Organic Flower and Vegetable Soil. Be sure to feed plants with a fertilizer formulated to encourage flowering to ensure full flowering.

China Asters

Pink and violet China asters should be a cutting garden staple.

Here’s a long-lasting cut flower that should gain newfound popularity. Few gardeners grow old-fashioned China asters (Callistephus chinensis) these days, but they are elegant, easy annuals that make fantastic arrangments. The Chrysanthemum-like blooms can be ruffled and double or starry and cactus-like, and their stems are long. Unlike Chrysanthemums, they come in shades of violet-blue and purple as well as pink, red, yellow, and white. The seed-grown annuals are a cinch to start in spring. Tower Custom Mix has ruffly blooms in many colors and long stems. ‘Starlight Light Pink‘, with its pale-pink quilled flowers, is also a good choice and has a very long vase-life. Caveats: these annuals cannot withstand drought and high heat.

Dahlias

Dahlias come in so many colors, shapes, and sizes, everyone loves them. (Image by Jessie Keith)

There is so much variation in dahlia flowers–from size to shape to color. The best for cutting must be long-stemmed, so plants should be 2-feet tall or more. My favorites have extra-large waterlily or cactus-type flowers reaching 6 to 12 inches across, but I also love the little guys with tiny pincushion blooms. Dahlias come in all colors of the rainbow except blue. Each year I try something new from one of my favorite sellers, Swan Island Dahlias. The 6 to 8 inch, soft orange blooms of ‘Honeymoon‘ caught my eye this year. Before planting dahlias, amend the soil with Black Gold Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, which also comes in handy for packing the tuberous roots for winter storage. (Click here to watch a video all about dahlias.)

Coneflowers

Here is my 2020 display of Cheyenne Spirit Mix coneflowers with my pink bigleaf hydrangeas in the background. It has been quite a spectacular season. (Image by Jessie Keith)

Fresh coneflowers last for up to a week in a vase, sometimes longer. There are so many different varieties (Echinacea hybrids) available in so many colors; it is hard to know what to pick. One of my favorite reds is Echinacea Cheyenne Spirit Mix, which comes in warm shades of red, orange, and yellow. My advice is to choose those with good hardiness that bloom for a long period and are reliably perennial. They are easy as pie to grow. Plant them in full sun and well-drained, amended soil, and you should be set. Always expect some seedlings the following year that you can move around or share with friends.

Gladiolus

Gladiolus flowers are so colorful and cheerful!

Gladiolus (Gladiolus hybrids, Zones 8-10) are inexpensive and very rewarding. They are sold in spring as packaged bulbs (actually corms) that must be planted after frost. Plant each just 3 inches down and cover. Add a little peat moss and bulb food at planting time to help ensure success. By summer, each bulb will send up spikes of brilliant flowers that are long-lasting when cut. After blooming, they will not flower again, so it is good to plant many. Gladiolus are tender but can be grown in colder zones as long as the corms are dug in fall and stored in a cool, dry place over winter. Try the unusual varieties ‘Fringed Coral Lace‘, with its frilled coral flowers, and ‘Passos‘, which has white blooms splashed with plum purple. Both look lovely together.

Bigleaf Hydrangeas

Let’s Dance® Rhythmic Blue® has bluest flower clusters. (Image by Proven Winners)

Any hydrangea flower is good for cutting, but bigleafs (Hydrangea macrophylla, Zones 5-11) are very pretty and come in shades of blue, pink, purple, red, and white. Mine is bubblegum pink and flowers throughout the summer. It’s an old variety that was in my yard when I purchased my 1926 home, so I don’t know its name. There are lots of new spectacular varieties on the market, if you have space for a bushy shrub in your landscape or garden. Let’s Dance® Rhythmic Blue® is a reblooming bigleaf with large purplish-blue flower clusters that impress, and it just reaches 4 feet high.

Rudbeckia

Indian Summer gloriosa daisy has huge blooms.

Otherwise known as black-eyed-Susans, Rudbeckia are cut-flower staples. They bloom over a long period, last forever when cut, and there are many kinds. Most are hardy perennials, while others, such as gloriosa daisy (Rudbeckia hirta) are short-lived perennials.

Gloriosas are some of the best for arranging because there are so many varieties. A classic that I have grown for over 25 years is ‘Indian Summer’, which has dark-eyed gold daisies that reach a whopping 6 to 9 inches across. The award-winner may even self-sow a little. Henry Eilers’ sweet coneflowers (Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’), with their matchstick yellow petals, are also pretty when cut.

Sunflowers

A sunflower glows against a background of red dahlias.

You cannot go wrong with annual sunflowers (Helianthus annuus). They are toss-the-seeds-in-the-ground-and-grow annuals that never disappoint. The heavy-flowering ‘Italian White’ is one of my favorites because its smaller ivory sunflowers are so unusual. This year I also grew the award-winning ‘Soraya‘, which has orange petals and brown centers. Another benefit is that the flowers produce little pollen, which can be surprisingly messy on a table or tablecloth. If you want to really grow sunflowers like the pros plant those in the Pro Cut Series, which have no pollen and bloom profusely. Expect sunflowers to continue flowering into late summer or early fall; be sure to let a few flowers to go to seed to naturally feed the birds. (Click here to watch a video about growing perfect sunflowers.)

Zinnias

Heat-loving zinnias are one of the best annual cut flowers of summer.

You cannot have a cutting garden without tall zinnias (Zinnia elegans). The upright annuals come in lots of vivid colors. My favorites have ragged, cactus-like blooms that stand out in arrangements, among others. The many colorful zinnia blends from Renee’s Garden Seeds are all excellent. (Raggedy Anne Mix can’t be beaten.) They come in color combos to suit almost anyone and bloom nonstop, with deadheading. 

Zinnias are easy to start from seed. Just clear out some good ground in late spring, sprinkle the seeds, cover them lightly with peat moss, and keep them moist. They should sprout in no time for an instant cutting garden.

Flower Cutting and Arranging Technique

I am so glad to have this section covered by a video, generously created by the award-winning floral designer, Jennie Love of Love n’ Fresh Flowers. Please watch it for a very simply how-to for creating the perfect summer bouquet. Then make the most of your cut flowers until the last bloom has been taken by frost.

Marvelous Miniature Flower Arranging

Small is sweet, especially when it comes to flowers and gardens. Miniature and fairy gardens have gained huge popularity, but miniature flower arrangements are just gaining attention. These tiny floral gems give crafty gardeners reason to collect the sweetest miniature vases (second-hand shops are a great source) and create small works of art that look best when presented in sets. Children are also thrilled to devise their own delicate mini flower creations.

Vases

We have gathered cute, tiny vases that are made of crystal, colored glass, and ceramic.

Rule one: your vases must be very little. Vase size, color, and personality can set the stage for your floral creation. Rounded vases are designed for radial views—or table centers. Square or rectangular vessels can hold front-facing floral arrangements to be placed against walls, or not. Brightly or wildly colored vases lend themselves to simpler floral color schemes for contrast, while simple, neutral vases can hold anything.

Basic Design Tenets

This simple arrangement maintains a monochrome color scheme of pink and balances two textures–an airy, mounded base of Joe-pye blooms and spiky celosia.

Formal floral design embodies many design tenets for good arranging. Here I will define six.

  1. Line: This is the arrangement’s path that draws the eye. The overall direction of an arrangement’s focal point—whether primarily vertical, horizontal, symmetrical, asymmetrical or angled—defines the line.
  2. Form: Flower placement defines form with respect to flower height, arrangement width, and depth.
  3. Space: Flower spacing is what enables each flower to be visually appreciated.
  4. Texture: This refers to the coarseness or fineness of arrangement components. A textural theme can be dominant (all fine or bold flowers and foliage) or mixed/balanced.
  5. Flower size: Central, dominating flowers are the biggest and boldest while smaller flowers and foliage accentuate the showpiece blooms like ladies in waiting.
  6. Color (scent can also be considered): For easy arranging, choose flowers with complementary contrasting colors, a beautiful bright or pastel hodgepodge, or flowers of all one type or color.

Or you can throw away the rules. The carefree gardener need not apply themselves to any rules and still create something beautiful. Wild and free arrangements have their own charm. This approach is often a default for kids unless you have a disciplined child wanting to design within set parameters.

Some Tiny Flowers

There are many mini flowers that are probably already in your garden! Here are some good ones.

All good cut flowers last longer in the vase. Choose small specimens with good longevity. Sometimes these can be smaller side blooms on plants with larger blooms (like purple coneflower, black-eyed-Susan, and Joe-pye-weed) white others are tiny from the getgo. All need to be placed in water just after cutting.

Alyssum (Lobularia maritima): These tiny, sweet-smelling blooms are white, pink, or purple.

Spike Celosia (Celosia spicata): These form papery spikes that last a long time. Choose small side blooms.

Gomphrena (Gomphrena globosa): The tiny papery globes come in pretty shades of red, pink, purple, and white.

Small Pinks (Dianthus spp.): The long-stemmed blooms may be white, pink, lavender, red, purple, and burgundy and look like little pincushion flowers.

French and Signet Marigolds (Tagetes patula and Tagetes tenuifolia): Everyone knows and loves these yellow, gold, and/or orange flowers.

Violas and violets (Viola spp.): These flat-faced, fragrant flowers prefer cool weather. Violets are just spring bloomers.

Jeana Tall Phlox (Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’): This tall phlox has clusters of teeny weeny lavender-pink flowers.

Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba): This airy perennial becomes covered with lots of tiny black-eyed golden blooms in late summer.

Miniature Roses (Rosa spp.): Everyone loves roses and miniature rose flowers are exquisite.

Small Salvias (I like Salvia farinacea and Salvia greggii): Almost all salvias–blue, pink, red, or white–work well.

Creeping Zinnia (Sanvitalia procumbens): The flowers of this creeping annual look like the tiniest black-eyed-Susans. So cute!

Small-flowered Zinnias (Zinna Profusion series and Zinnia angustifolia): Small-flowered zinnias come in many bright shades and last long in the vase.

Complement any of these blooms with attractive foliage from any appealing garden plant. (Click here for a list of additional fast-growing cut flowers for fall.)

All of these flowers grow best in garden beds amendment with Black Gold Garden Compost Blend. The annuals thrive in pots of Black Gold All Purpose Potting Mix.

Designs

This suite of tiny arrangements shows the diversity of pretty bouquets you can bring together in the garden.

Each vase of flowers should embody the maker. Go for the style or design scheme that pleases you the most. Here are a few that I created with my girls.

A collection of different miniature arrangements—coordinated or every which way—can make quite a statement. Line them up along a window ledge or as a collective on a shelf or table.

My girls love to create their own intermittently to decorate the dinner table. This idea could also work at a dinner party. A personalized mini floral creation at each table setting would also look impressive.

The tiniest of the tiny arrangements are the cutest!