Garden Lessons from Sarah Raven
Many of you probably already know Sarah Raven - she’s based in the UK and has been growing cutting gardens and cut flowers for a very long time. I love her enthusiasm for cut flowers and gardening in small spaces in particular, and she has a very unique plant palette - one that is very distinctly British, and is one of our favorite and most inspiring gardeners.
I particularly love the way that her garden is composed - the front of Perch Hill shows drifts of brightly colored dahlias and poppies and other romantic flowers that spill down a slope and weave their way through a rustic wooden fence. Beds full of tulips and scented narcissi and alliums in spring give way to fennel, scabiosa, cosmos, and euphorbia, all in a very casual, English cottage style .
There are definitely distinct beds - and some plantings are much more formal and structure than others, but the overall effect is not in straight agricultural rows with tightly packed plants (such as a flower farmer row or a clipped and staked English herbaceous perennial border) but is a bit more loose and natural and wild in its appearance.
It’s the perfect blend between function and esthetic, where the garden is both productive but also enjoyable and esthetic at the same time. You can tell that the garden is tended by someone who at heart is a gardener - but also harvests plenty of vegetables for the table and flowers for the vase.
Here are some invaluable garden lessons that we’ve learned from Sarah:
1. On spring filler and foliage
Having the same issues as most of us do in regards to a lack of floral materials to pair with our tulips and ranunculus, Sarah advocates for growing early sources of foliage to pair with these wonderful spring flowers - both for the increased complexity in arrangements and to make your blooms go further. She mentions euphorbia, flowering lunaria and cerinthe as some of her favorite fillers - which we’ll be growing this year!
2. Productivity is key for small spaces
Sarah Raven has really honed in on a lot of varieties of cut flowers that are very productive in a small space. Species such as zinnias, scabiosa and cosmos are highly encouraged due to their productivity - Cosmos ‘Purity’ in particular as being one of the most productive plants you can grow and one that Sarah absolutely loves. These super productive species are key to ensuring that you can grow a lot of flowers - even in a small space.
In the same way, she also advocates for growing cut and come again edible plants as well - arugula, chard, kale, lettuces, lots of herbs and other vegetables that are very productive in a small space, providing fresh vegetables all season long.
3. Tender Annuals and Perennials Have the Longest Window of Harvest
Hardy perennials such as peonies usually only bloom for a few weeks out of the year, whereas tender perennials like dahlias and salvias will flower for as much as twenty weeks, meaning much more productivity as a result. This is because the tender perennials are used to tropical or subtropical conditions and are used to longer growing seasons with more temperature conditions, and therefore bloom for much longer periods of time.
The same goes for annuals too - hardy annuals like larkspur only bloom for a few weeks, while tender annuals like zinnias and marigolds will continue to bloom for months on end so long as they are harvested regularly, which is why a lot of people rely more on annuals to provide interest and color for plantings. Adding tender annuals to your borders or cutting gardens will allow you to keep color and interest going all season long.
4. Harvesting Flowers: Cut, Condition, Rest, Arrange
When it comes to harvesting materials, Sarah Raven advocates for a rest period of your materials prior to arranging with them. Although in an emergency you can always clip something from the garden and pop it into an arrangement, it’s best if you let the materials rest in deep cold water for a period of time before arranging with them.
Bonus: Sarah advocates for using the boiling water technique on stems, explaining that it increases the surface area that the stem can uptake water and helps with materials that are more difficult to hydrate such as mint, basil, artemisia and horehound, which I’ve found to work very well.
5. Be bold with your color
Although we’ve perfected the peach/white/blush color palette, it’s much more challenging to start mixing in brighter saturated colors like oranges, reds and chartreuse. Because these colors are so bold and in your face, they require a bit more handling compared to the more muted, dusty tones.
Combining bold colors with equally bold colors as their companions seems to work well - a mix of hot pink, acid green and bright orange work together, while paired with other softer colors they would generally overpower other elements in the arrangement.
You can of course pair the bold colors with similar colors - a hot pink works well with blush and dusty rose and mint green, while an acid green works well with ivory, white, and hunter green.
You have to commit to color however - it won’t work otherwise. We like blocking our colors so that oranges, reds, and hot pinks are planted together while whites, blues, purples and pinks go together, being in a more harmonious arrangement as opposed to clashing.
Whether you grow annuals or perennials, flowers or vegetables, grow in Britain or elsewhere, there are so many things to learn from Sarah! I just love how unabashedly she shares her love for gardening, cut flowers and color, and she inspires us to be more bold and daring in our garden choices.
If you’re interested in learning more about Sarah, definitely visit her website and see more of what she’s all about. Check out the flower section of course - she has some brilliant flower combinations (such as the Super-Speedy Cut Flower seed collection pictured below!)
Or, you can check out her books - my particular favorite is the ‘Bold and Brilliant Garden’ but equally excellent is ‘The Cutting Garden: Growing and Arranging Garden Flowers’ (note: affiliate links included)
