Don't Try This At Home

Why Growing Cut Flowers in Your Garden Doesn't Always Work.

Visit any florist and the first thing that you'll notice is the vivid colours of many cut flowers. The second thing you'll notice is how perfect they all are. No spots, no crooked stems or chewed petals. If you're a keen gardener your next thought might be, "I bet I could grow some of these at home". Well, you can, just don't expect them to look like the flowers in the florist.

Cut Roses are Bred to Grow Indoors

Let's take roses as an example. It can be tempting some times to try and grow those perfect cut rose varieties you see in the florist in your own garden, but be warned, this can be a very frustrating exercise. Cut rose varieties are bred to grow in the closely monitored environment of a glasshouse where pests and diseases are rigorously controlled. Rose glasshouses are so controlled these days that temperature, humidity, light and even carbon dioxide levels are all computer controlled 24 hours a day. You can't do this in your garden! What this means is at best you may not get as many flowers per bush as a rose grower, at worst you may only get a few small insect ravaged flowers, full stop. Many new varieties are not as tolerant of pests and diseases as the old garden varieties, so they will suffer badly from aphids, thrips or mildew in a garden environment. In a glasshouse this is not as big a problem, as this fully closed structure prevents most pests from even getting in and tight humidity control helps prevent mildew attack.

Colour Change

The other obvious difference you may notice is colour. In some cases (eg 'Leonidas' or 'Pareo') these roses may even produce flowers with a very different colour when grown outdoors compared to a glasshouse. This is because the light conditions are very different inside a glasshouse than in your garden, and light has a huge effect on petal colour in roses.

Cottage Garden Flowers

You can grow many of the 'cottage garden' cut flowers in your garden with great success, depending on where you live. Daphne, Scabiosa and Ranunculus are three examples of cut flowers that grow well in southern Australian gardens. It is the highly bred, super-colourful flowers like roses, gerberas and chrysanthemums that may not reproduce those fantastic blooms you see in the florist in your garden. Best stick to the tried and true garden rose varieties, which may not last as long when cut, but are often more heavily scented.