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The bouquet-growing bible gardeners have been waiting for! Learn the ins and outs of growing gorgeous blooms at home with professional flower farmer Lisa Mason Ziegler of @gardenersworkshopfarm.
*2025 GardenComm Silver Laurel Media Award Winner*Whether you’re
cultivating fresh-cut bouquets for yourself, family, and friends or for others on a small commercial scale, you’ll go from sowing seeds to cutting armloads of colorful, long-lasting blooms with ease. Lisa’s unique approach and easy-to-follow advice on
multi-season planting and harvesting uses the natural warm and cool weather cycles present in almost all growing regions to maximize cut flower production.
This logical and nature-driven method is also a signature hallmark of her super-successful online flower-farming courses, and it’s one that
translates equally well to both small urban backyards and large rural flower farms.
Growing your own cut flowers means you can
avoid bouquets laden with pesticides (who wants
that on their wedding day?) and you can skip the trips to your local flower shop or grocery store to pay big bucks for a bouquet that has racked up more airline miles than you could ever hope to.
Included in this essential cut flower growing handbook are:
- 50 extensive flower profiles divided into their preferred season of growth. Cool-weather favorites include poppies, snapdragons, and bells of Ireland. Warm-season beauties include zinnias, sunflowers, and celosia.
- Planting tips for a succession of blooms that carry over from one growing season to the next without any additional work from you.
- Illustrations showing how to pinch plants for more blooms, how to make your cuts, how to erect support netting to keep your flowers straight and upright, how to dig a planting bed, and more.
- Over 200 photographs of the best cut flowers for home gardeners to grow, the most effective methods for their care, and the most productive ways to organize them in the garden.
- Advice on caring for a cutting garden, locating the best planting site, starting plants from seed, making the harvest, prolonging the life of your cut flowers, and so much more!
The Cut Flower Handbook is
the perfect balance of inspiration and education for anyone interested in bringing more beauty into their lives by growing cut flowers at home.
List of contents
Introduction
one The Cut Flower Concept
The Three-Season Annual Cutting Garden
The Cutting Garden’s Lifeline: Harvesting
two The Basics of Growing Cut Flowers
Best Bed Location and Preparation
Starting from Seed Indoors and in the Garden
Planting and Caring for the Cutting Garden
three Cool-Season Hardy Annuals
41 of the Best Cool-Season Flowers to Grow
four Warm-Season Tender Annuals
25 of the Best Warm-Season Flowers to Grow
Resources
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Index
About the author
Lisa Mason Ziegler is an accomplished speaker and the owner of the Gardener’s Workshop, a thriving small cut-flower market farm. She began her career selling cut flowers to local florists and Colonial Williamsburg, a business that soon grew to include florists, supermarkets, farmer’s markets, a garden-share program, and a subscription service and later expanded into selling the tools, supplies, and seeds that she uses in her own garden. At the same time, Lisa has steadily built a speaking career leading presentations and workshops for garden clubs, master gardeners, commercial growers, and other groups centering on her simplified organic gardening methods. She is the author of
Cool Flowers,
Vegetables Love Flowers, and
The Cut Flower Handbook.
Summary
The Cut Flower Handbook is a gorgeously illustrated, all-encompassing guide to growing your own cut flowers at home.
