Starting a picking garden: our tips for the most beautiful flowers

The vast majority of (annual) flowers prefer to grow in the sun. This means that the location of your picking garden is very important if you want flowers that will grow optimally later on. A spot in partial shade is also possible, but at least 5 to 6 hours of sunlight per day is recommended. The less sunlight there is, the harder it is for the plant to stay healthy and produce many flowers. A picking garden in the shade is not possible, that is harsh reality. This is mainly because just about all picking flowers also need heat and come naturally from slightly sunnier areas. 

Without healthy soil, no healthy plants in the picking garden, that's very simple. You can only get healthy plants if the soil on which those plants grow is balanced, healthy. Keeping your soil strong is done by adding compost every year. Don't dig, just add a layer of about 5 inches. The soil life, which lives in the first 20 to 30 inches, will underwork it for you over the next few months.

A lot of people are ready with fertilizers before they even know if they are needed. Because no, they are not always needed. Not most of the time, in fact. Staking on a good soil structure and by extension a healthy soil is much more important. Adding fertilizer to a depleted soil is of no use to plants. Better to enrich the soil with compost as you can read above. It is not called the black gold of the picking garden for nothing. It has the ability to retain moisture and nutrients and contains a lot of natural components. So rather invest your time and money in improving the soil, instead of adding fertilizers to it. Which, by the way, mean nothing without a healthy growing environment for your plants.

If you are just beginning to create a picking garden, it is advisable to start with easy flowers, so that you are slowly introduced to how plants grow. Cosmos are easy, but zinnias, snapdragons and dahlias should also be included. They are "cut and come again" flowers, as the English say so nicely. The more often you cut, the more flowers you get.

The picking garden is a broad term. It is a place where you can grow flowers to pick and keep them in a vase. But exactly what that picking garden looks like is entirely up to you. A classic picking garden has rows, like a vegetable garden. But nothing stops you from taking a different approach. We love the combination of perennials and annuals in the border. So yes, a picking garden can also just be in a flower border, among your other plants. It's even more varied. By the way, make sure you arrange your garden so that there is something to enjoy throughout the year. A traditional picking garden can be quite boring, especially during the months when there is less to do. Combining picking flowers in an existing border is just that much more exciting. And maybe even more beautiful.

Once your picking garden is ready, the soil prepared and your favorite flowers chosen, it is important to start sowing. No exuberant picking garden without flowers, that goes without saying. Sowing can be done from February and March, depending on the variety. Read the packaging of our seeds carefully beforehand and sow at the specified times. You don't want your seeds not to germinate because it's still too cold outside. Seeds that need a lot of warmth can be pre-sown in seed trays or seed trays. More work, because you have to take care of them all the time, but more overview and less trouble from slugs and snails. Sowing outside is also possible. Usually a little later, after the frosts, when the chance of night frost has disappeared.