Growing Cut Flowers in Containers: What Has Worked for Me
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There is so much joy that comes with being able to step outside in the morning and cut fresh flowers to display in your home! I adore this.
To look at flowers in vases around your home and know that you grew them gives immense satisfaction. Truly, the simple pleasures in life are the most special.
Growing flowers takes you outside each day. A lovely excuse to step outside in the sunshine! I love a morning potter walking around with a mug of tea and looking at what is growing or blooming.
At my house, we have a large paved area in my backyard. I wanted to fill it with colour and so I set out with a number of containers and pots. I also want to grow them from seed.
Growing flowers from seed has been a fun way to engage my daughter in gardening. She loves the process and even takes it upon herself to fill a pot with dirt and sow seeds independently.
If you have children, gardening is an ideal slow living activity. Read my post on slow living with children.
I’m writing this post in the middle of winter in Australia, after reflecting back on the past 12 months of what grew nicely from seed. I’ll add photos below so you can get ideas for which cut flowers you might like to try growing.
Cut Flowers Grown in Containers
Another benefit to growing cut flowers in containers is that if you are renting or looking to move in the future, you don’t have to worry about an established flower bed that you won’t see the benefits from.
Cut Flowers From Seed
Each of the flowers below that I grew in containers, were started as a seed. There is immense joy in starting your flowers from seed! You are learning to love a slow process. To spot the first seedlings gives you a wonderful feeling.
The other benefit of growing your own cut flowers is that you can make a small bouquet to gift to someone. Giving someone flowers that you tended to yourself is a treat. A lovely slow living gift.
My first mixed cut flower vase display! All grown from seed in containers.
The Different Flowers
I will get into the different flower types that bloomed beautifully for me this past 12 months.
These are annual flowers, which means they have one season. I am in the process of growing perennial flowers in pots, but they take a couple seasons to bloom. So I will keep you updated once that happens. Join my newsletter below to stay connected.
Sunflowers
Sunflowers grow so quickly! This flower is lots of fun to sow sunflower seeds if you have children. Mine went from seed to flowering in around two months.
Sunflowers grow very tall in pots, so you only want a couple seedlings per pot. I had three in my pot, and two of the flowers took most of the nutrients and grew the strongest.
Whereas, there was one short one you can see in the back of the pot into photo. They were shorter, but still lovely. You may want to just leave two stems to grow if you have a pot of similar size.
In terms of pests, sunflowers attracted aphids. They caused a little damage to the leaves, but not the flower so they were tolerable. But if you do not want any aphids, perhaps consider another flower below to grow in your container garden.
Dahlias
One of my top favourite flowers that there are! Growing dahlias from seed took a few attempts. They never took for me in seedling trays. The only time they worked was when I put them in their final pot. So, I won’t bother with seedling trays in the future to grow dahlias.
Dahlias grow tall, so you will need a very large container to provide enough soul for their root system. Once their season is done, you will find you have grown tubers! So cool. You can dig these up at the end of season to store and plant the tubers again in the spring.
Dahlias are a showstopper kind of flower. A magnificent beauty to pop in a vase or even to gift someone! What’s great is you can cut the flower and it will happily grow another one.
Zinnias
I found my zinnias to be lovely and colourful. They were grown in mostly sun, and pretty tolerant of the hot Australian sun in summer. That did come with a higher watering requirement, but that was OK for me as I fill my watering can with tank water.
Mine were grown from seed in a large pot, sprinkled among dahlia seeds. This worked out just fine. My zinnias grew very tall and while I was prepared for that, they were leaning into the flowers in the next pot, often requiring untangling.
Cosmos
This is my favourite to grow as a cut flower.
Cosmos have become my favourite cut flower to grow at home. The flowers grow quickly, I like the green foliage. The foliage was lovely and added a nice green touch to my container garden. No bugs were eating my cosmos. Their colour variety is broad so you can pick what colour you prefer.
Further, you can collect seeds easily on the flowers that dry out and resow them over and over!
Cosmos tolerated the hot weather in summer. I have two more varieties of cosmos I have ordered to sow late winter ready for blooming in spring. Order your cosmos seeds.
Pink Floral Seed Mix
My daughter picked a pink floral seed mix packet and it worked out great!
The one thing that is tricky, is the flowers bloom at different times and some are a little more delicate than others. Nonetheless, if you are after a certain colour of flowers.
A floral mix is a great idea for growing cut flowers in containers.
Dwarf Snapdragons
While a lovely flower once they bloom, I would prefer to grow the regular size snapdragon in the future.
The seedlings took a long time to grow, and when they did it wasn’t the best cut flower. Dwarf snapdragons are nice if you want to leave them in the container and not treat them as cut flowers.
What has been a pleasant surprise, is a few of these flowers bloomed again a couple weeks ago due to a warm start to winter here in NSW, Australia!
California Poppy
If you like pink, these are such lovely flowers to grow. I will warn that they are quite delicate. So if you have them somewhere open and subject to high wind or storms, the petals fall off. It’s a very sad sight to walk out and see the petals everywhere.
Despite that, they are very pretty and a nice flower that didn’t need anything special to grow besides good soil.
Beautiful Floral Gardening Products
Here are some lovely flower garden inspired products I have curated from Amazon as an affiliate:
My curated selection of lovely floral gardening products from other retailers:
In Closing
If you are also wanting to grow produce for my kitchen, read my post on my tips for growing herbs and vegetables in containers.
For those who are looking for something seasonal and on the topic of flowers, here is my seasonal living guide to spring.
Thank you so much for stopping by my little online cottage!
Rachael x
About the Author
Hello, I’m Rachael. Welcome to my cosy cottage! Here you will find blog posts about the seasons, slow living and cosy homemaking. Read more cosy posts here.
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Grow your own flowers from seed to cut and display around your home! In this garden blog post, I am sharing what cut flowers worked for me with photos of the beautiful blooms.