Getting Started in Cut-Flowers • Top 15 Cuts
15 Easy-to-Grow Cut Flowers, Suggested by Flower Farmers Around the US
Conversations at a recent flower-growing symposium, where growers compared the crops they cut, got us thinking about which flowers are easiest to grow from seed for people just starting out.
If you are thinking about a cut-flower business, a regional growers' event can be an excellent crash course. Speakers vary, but at one recent Southern flower symposium hosted by a Lowcountry flower growers' group, experienced farmers led panels where growers of every level talked through their methods and shared hard-won advice. Attendees went home more confident and armed with tips suited to the South.
The Hensley's team combined lessons from that event with advice from several other experienced growers to put together this list of the 15 Best Cut Flowers for Beginners. Keep a notebook handy as you build your seed list.
Easy Tier-1 Trio
We start with three focal flowers: sunflowers, zinnias and rudbeckias. All three are widely considered very easy, whether you are filling a backyard cutting bed or growing for a farmers market or local florists.
Our Flower Grower's Library has articles on many subjects, including planting and harvest details for individual flower crops. One of the most popular is a piece from our flower team called 3 Easy, Reliable & Productive Cut Flowers. It explains that sunflowers, zinnias and rudbeckias earn the top spot because they offer qualities every grower values, especially beginners. Each of them is:
- Beautiful
- Productive
- Fast-growing
- Relatively low-maintenance
- Simple to harvest
That makes these three a great starting point for brand-new gardeners, for anyone hoping to earn a little extra income on the side, and for vegetable farmers ready to add cut flowers.
1 • Sunflowers
For a longtime grower at a Texas flower farm , sunflowers anchor a large grocery program. Her straight bunches and mixed bouquets stock the floral department of a regional specialty grocerin Houston, where shoppers who used to visit her farmers market stall now buy her bouquets all year.
Just south of 30°N latitude, she can grow sunflowers in nearly every season. Her fields are in USDA Zone 8b, where average winter lows are 15–20°F (about -9 to -7°C), so seeding can start early. She sows in the greenhouse and, if no freeze is forecast, begins transplanting in mid-February, then plants a new succession every week to ten days until mid-September.
For Thanksgiving, she counts back about 60 days from the holiday harvest. A top seller then is 'ProCut Plum', loved for its deep autumn color. Other favorites include 'ProCut Orange', 'Vincent's Choice', 'Vincent Fresh' and 'Superior Sunset'. She sows a very large number of sunflowers each year for both bouquets and straight bunches.
- Tall (Single-Stem) Sunflowers • Key Growing Information
- Branching Sunflowers • Key Growing Information
- Single-Stemmed Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) • Production Guide • Tech Sheet (PDF)
2 • Zinnias
Zinnias are strong, all-season bloomers that stand up to summer heat and rain almost anywhere. Two favorites: 'Benary's Giant Mix', with full, many-petaled flowers up to 6" wide in bright colors, and 'Queeny Red Lime', with an unusual mix of antique rose and pink outer petals fading to chartreuse and creamy lime around a vivid hot-pink center.
Zinnias are central to the Texas farm's big bouquets. The grower raises the Benary's Giant series and Queeny Seriesand pairs them with the smaller-flowered Oklahoma series. She likes combining one large and one small zinnia, and she finds Oklahoma types last well in the vase.
She does not sell mixed colors, preferring to bunch zinnias by color for her grocery customers. As a plant is cut repeatedly, new flowers get smaller, so she sows a new succession every month to six weeks to keep blooms large.
3a • Rudbeckia
We will come back to Rudbeckia below, but it clearly belongs among the three easiest and most productive cut flowers. It tolerates heat and drought, needs little care and blooms for weeks, and not only in yellow:'Cherry Brandy' produces 3–4" flowers in rich, beautiful reds, and 'Cherokee Sunset Mix' bears large double blooms in warm oranges, golds, bronzes and chocolate tones, along with bicolors.
12 More Entry-Level Cuts: A Dependable Dozen
Building on that short list, our flower team picked a dozen more essential cut flowers: flowers, herbs and accents that each have a job in floral design, from focal blooms to textural fillers.
To test the list, the Hensley's team asked Slow Flowers members across the country, growers with varied experience in many regions and hardiness zones, for their practical tips on these crops.
A husband-and-wife team run a Georgia family flower farm , and they credit the Texas grower with mentoring them. The two growers are good friends and often meet at regional events like the Southern symposium.
As fairly new flower farmers, the Georgia couple grow most of their flowers from seed. They have leaned on their mentor's advice because their hardiness zones match and their climate is broadly similar to hers in Texas.
They first wanted to see if flower farming could work as a family project involving their children. It has, and the family now brings unusual, beautiful bunches and bouquets to several regional farmers markets.
In 2015, their first year, they bought a cut-flower kit for market growers with generous seed counts of 'Sunbright', 'Sunrich Orange DMR', and 'ProCut Orange' sunflowers, plus cosmos 'Versailles Mix' and zinnia 'Benary's Giant Mix' zinnia.
It was just the right size to give them a feel for flower farming. They planted all of it on a small plot, with rows of cosmos, zinnias and sunflowers along with celosia.
The next year they went all in. Today the farm sells mixed bouquets and straight bunches at markets in Georgia and South Carolina. Here are the grower's tips on a few favorites.
4 • Celosia
Celosia is a market favorite. The children call the crested type "brain flowers" and joke that it is the smartest crop on the farm. When shoppers ask about a flower, it is usually the celosia, which makes it a great conversation starter and adds distinctive texture to bouquets.
The family does not direct-sow Celosia , because field mice regularly eat the seed. Everything is started in soil blocks and transplanted to the field later.
Usually, the crested celosia (Celosia argentea cristata)is planted in a grid six rows across with about 6" between plants. Celosia is also set closer for smaller crests, while 9" spacing yields bigger heads.
The grower is just as fond of plumose celosia (Celosia argentea plumosa) . She considers these feathery types far more than filler, since they add a distinct texture, and they are a big reason customers describe her bouquets as natural-looking. This season's favorite is 'Flamingo Feather,' a soft blush variety she plans to grow much more of.
Frost usually holds off until after Thanksgiving, so around mid-September the farm makes one last planting of its best summer annuals, starting sunflowers, zinnias and celosia in soil blocks to carry them through the holiday markets.
- Celosia • Key Growing Information
- Celosia / Cockscomb (Celosia argentea) • Production Guide • Tech Sheet (PDF)
3b• Rudbeckia Redux
Growers can treat it as an annual, but it often returns as a short-lived perennial even in cold northern gardens. Third-party photo.
Her favorite black-eyed Susan is Rudbeckia triloba. A visit to her mentor's Texas farm convinced her to plant more annuals specifically for filler, and adding Rudbeckia triloba and basil changed her bouquets more than anything else.
This rudbeckia sends up a central stem with many side branches carrying small bright yellow flowers with dark brown centers. Some call it filler, but on the Georgia farm its branching shape is the foundation of each bouquet: they begin with a few stems of Rudbeckia triloba and tuck focal flowers among the branches. The children make most of the market bouquets.
5 • Basil
Basil is another bouquet must for the Georgia grower, as it is for her mentor. She does not want to sell an unscented bouquet again, and customers have responded very well to bouquets with basil.
Like their mentor, the Georgia family grows lemon and 'Cinnamon' basil for cutting. Seedlings are started in soil blocks and set out around the beginning of April. Cutting starts in late May and continues into September, and they sow a little more each month for a steady supply. Stems are used with or without flowers for a different look, and shedding has not been a problem.
The Texas grower raises three basils for foliage: African blue basil, a sterile hybrid propagated from cuttings, plus lemon and 'Cinnamon' basil from seed. She loves the scent of lemon basil and values 'Cinnamon' for its spicy aroma and toughness in summer heat, planting lemon first and adding 'Cinnamon' later.
6 • Dill
The Georgia grower calls dill a purposeful filler, especially early in the season. Shoppers love its scent, and she has learned how strongly fragrance connects to memory; flowers often prompt customers to share stories.
'Bouquet' blooms early and makes an attractive filler, with airy chartreuse flower heads that go with nearly any color scheme.
7 • Ageratum
It is often treated as filler for its small, fluffy lavender flowers, but the Texas grower points out that Ageratum also has lovely foliage.Ageratum leaves are a real asset in arrangements.
'Timeless Mix' combines taller varieties with a long bloom season, ideal for the cutting garden. Its sturdy upright stems carry tight clusters in purple, pink, blue and white, handy for filling gaps in bouquets.
8 • Amaranth
Shown here with 'Red Spike'. Third-party photo.
In western Montana, a pair of growers raise cut flowers at a Montana flower farmin Zone 4b, where average winter lows reach -20 to -25°F (about -29 to -32°C).
Asked about the best flowers from seed, the Montana grower was enthusiastic about amaranth. She recommends buying amaranth seed in bulk for the best value and planting all of it.
She starts some seed in cell trays to time successions in prepared rows and scatters leftover seed in open spots around the property where it will get some moisture. The seed sprouts wherever it lands; she has even tossed it onto thin snow over bare ground. Left to nature, it has filled corners of the farm with small stands of amaranth.
Her favorites include 'Red Spike' and 'Hot Biscuits' (Amaranthus cruentus) and the trailing 'Love-Lies-Bleeding' (Amaranthus caudatus) varieties. She lets the plants grow large without pinching, then harvests and dries them in fall for foam-free floral installations.
Drying softens the colors, which she likes. Love-lies-bleeding dries to a dusty pink she finds even prettier than the fresh color.
9 • Ammi/Daucus
Once her soil can be worked in mid-May, the Montana grower direct-sows Ammi and Daucus, with good results. She has also overwintered a fall-sown bed of ammi successfully.
Long-lasting ammi is an excellent filler for cut flowers. 'Dara' is a very productive Daucus variety with many strong upright stems per plant, each topped by lacy flower heads in dark purple, pink and white.
10 • Snapdragon
Snapdragons are a heavy producer the Montana grower can cut all season. She sticks with the classic Potomac Series and 'Rocket Mix', whose stems stay strong through the second and third cuts.
Her customers include retail flower shops that want standard snapdragons. Fresh local snaps are hard to beat; from freelance work processing flowers for florists, she knows shipped snapdragons often arrive crushed and look nothing like freshly cut stems.
She sows snapdragon seed thickly in an open flat, almost like microgreens, then pricks out seedlings once they have their first true leaves and moves them into plug trays. It takes extra labor, but it saves space in her small seed-starting area. Flats begin under lights, and about a month later, when it is time to move seedlings to cell trays, it is usually warm enough to shift them to an unheated covered transition house.
- Snapdragons • Key Growing Information
- Snapdragons ( Antirrhinum majus ) • Production Guide • Tech Sheet (PDF)
- Snapdragon Groups Explained • Article
11 • Strawflower
This Washington grower rents land in the Skagit Valley, grows about half an acre of cut flowers and sells mostly through a regional farmer-to-florist wholesale market. Having worked at the market before, she understands what local designers and florists like.
Working there showed her which colors sell and which do not, so she plans around wedding and event florists with lots of white, cream, pale yellow and blush.
Her crop list includes dahlias, carnations, strawflower, Ammobium, verbena, feathertop grass, and zinnias (Oklahoma, Profusion and 'Persian Carpet'), plus smaller-headed, paler sunflowers, a few rows of marigolds in assorted colors, cress, amaranth, larkspur, cosmos, feverfew and heirloom mums.
She did not expect her strawflowers to be such a hit, but the market's social media tells the story: one summer post of her 'Silvery Rose' bunch drew a large response. Strawflower quickly became one of her top crops. It looks great fresh and can also be dried, which adds options. She grows 'Vintage White', 'Silvery Rose', and 'Apricot/Peach Mix' strawflowers, and she found seed of a vintage white type from a small overseas grower.
She saves single-color bunches for florists and sells mixed bunches to grocery buyers. Anything unsold at the end of the week goes home to hang and dry, and she brings it back late in summer as dried stems for fall wreath makers.
She starts strawflower in soil-blocking trays of 50 blocks. For one variety with lower listed germination, she sowed two or three seeds per block with good results. Trays go from heat mats to lights, then outdoors to a low hoop tunnel before planting. Her one change for next year is to support the plants with netting, since wind tends to knock them over.
12 • Cosmos
Cosmos are another best seller. She grows mostly white varieties, always popular for weddings. Cosmos bloom heavily all summer, but the tricky part is knowing when to cut.
She gets the longest vase life by cutting when the center is still tight. The latest she cuts is when the outer ring of the disk is just starting to open; once the center is fully open, the pollen sheds.
Regular cutting keeps plants producing. She harvests three times a week and deadheads everything at the end of the week, so new blooms are ready by the next cutting day.
The large, double blooms of 'Double Click Mix' bears large, double, deeply fringed flowers in carmine, pink and white with yellow centers, on tall branching stems with ferny foliage that also works as a green filler.
Here are the last three flowers on our list, with our notes. For full planting and harvest details, see the flower production guides in our Flower Grower's Library .
13 • Scabiosa
Scabiosa, also called pincushion flower or mourningbride, is a versatile cut flower with a spiky domed center and strong, wiry stems, useful fresh or dried. Some varieties form ornamental seedpods shaped like shuttlecocks that add a playful touch to bouquets. 'Pincushion Formula Mix' bears button-like flowers in deep near-black, lavender-blue, butter yellow, bright red, salmon-rose and white on tough, wiry stems. Easy and reliable; cut often to keep blooms coming.
14 • Gomphrena
Also called globe amaranth, Gomphrena forms bushy, upright plants that produce clover-like flowers all summer long. Like the true Amaranthus species above, it needs little special care and tolerates hot, dry summers. Frequent cutting encourages more blooms, and it grows well in beds or rows for larger plantings.
15 • Bupleurum
Also called thorow wax or hare's ear, bupleurum grows quickly and adapts to many conditions. Upright plants bear small yellow to lime-green flower clusters in umbels on long, thin, wiry stems. It is last on our list but far from least: its airy, fine texture makes it a classic, versatile filler, which is why it also appears among our Flower Farmers' Favorite Foliages & Fillers.
Learn More
If you have read this far and are ready to begin, consider one of our beginner-friendly cut-flower sets, put together by our flower team.
This map shows a sample cutting-garden layout for a 10' x 13' bed, sized for our Easy Cut-Flower Garden Set. For bigger spaces, follow the same layout and spacing and simply add more plants.
- Easy Cut-Flower Garden Set. This set offers about a dozen easy flowers and herbs from the list above, in a range of colors and textures, for a steady supply of cuts all season. Buy the varieties individually or as a full set. It comes with a Garden Planner and Garden Mapthat offer bouquet ideas and recipes using the focal, accent, filler and spike flowers in the set, plus practical guidance on spacing and plant counts. A great fit for home gardeners.
- Cut-Flower Kit for Market Growers. For growers with more time and space, this kit contains enough seed for roughly a quarter-acre of reliable cosmos, sunflower and zinnia varieties for market sales. It includes our Cut Flower Kit Growing Guide, a short brochure covering the basics of growing cut flowers for profit, planting instructions and a sample planting plan.
