Flower Bouquets and Lavender Distilling!
Meet Rockway Farmhouse Blooms!
We initially fell in love with the idea of a vibrant cut flower garden to create bouquets to share with friends and family. Perhaps we’d even try a roadside stand if we were any good at it! This is the story of our summer of flowers!
All winter we planned the garden. We watched gardening videos, scratched down ideas and ordered seeds! In March, we staked out a 14 x 20 plot, and as soon as the ground was workable, tilled in the grass with manure from a local farm. We started seeds in the basement under grow lights in April.
The spot we chose was meant to be - one of the previous owners had given us a wonderful photo of their beautiful garden from the 1980s in the same spot!
There are 6 x 3’ flower rows with a walkway in between each, all lined with corrugated cardboard and wood chips. We had our willow trees trimmed this year and kept the wood chips for mulch!
The snapdragons, started inside in April, would end up being the best performer of the season! They take a long time to start but then continued to bloom into November! I used them in every bouquet the entire season! We also had beautiful Rockway Farmhouse Blooms labels designed by https://www.alexandercrerar.com/ We absolutely love them!
While working on the cut flower garden, we tilled 3 x 50’ rows for 75 lavender plants that arrived in May from a local grower! We love the Munstead lavender we planted around our veggie garden in 2015 but decided to use Phenomenal and Sensational lavender in the new rows. They were absolutely beautiful their first year! Can’t wait to watch them flourish!
Munstead Lavender around veggie garden
Phenomenal and Sensational Lavender rows
Water is always a consideration with flower gardens and we decided to use Rainbird Drip Irrigation. Once we got the hang of it, we used this drip irrigation system in the cut flower garden, lavender rows and at the front of the house for the hydrangeas – we highly recommend this product! Each of the cut flower garden rows got two irrigation lines and that also helped with the spacing of seedlings and seeds.
We wanted to learn and experiment with different flowers.
We’re lucky to have so many professionals willing to share their expertise online. For reference, we are in growing zone 6B. We had 2 full rows of Zinnias – these seeds are directly sown and once they took off – they were gorgeous cut and come again flowers! The next 2 rows were Snapdragons (our rockstars)! Next, we did 1 row with a variety of Asters, Anemones, Ranunculus and Cosmos. We had some beautiful blooms, but next year, we’ll plant Cosmos around the barn because they take up a huge area. The last row was a combination of Sunflowers, African Marigolds and Dahlias. Love them all but not in the same row. We will work on that next season! The obelisks were planted with Sweet Peas!
Zinnias!
Snapdragons!
Sweet Peas and Marigolds!
Dahlias are beautiful and magical! I ordered tubers from a couple of different Canadian growers. They were expensive and didn’t look like much. I was not confident they would ever bloom. But WOW did they! You have to dig Dahlia’s up after the first frost because they don’t survive over winter here. We were amazed that what once was a dreary looking single tuber root in May, became a huge clump of multiple tubers by October! We’re storing ours in peat moss in labelled paper bags in our cool cellar over the winter. I’ll divide the tubers in the spring and have even more of these beauties in dedicated rows!
On a whim, I planted a bunch of leftover and random flower seeds along our barn and never watered or paid any attention to them and they blossomed! In particular, the Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia) were spectacular! Reminds me of that saying, “Bloom where you are planted”!
Tithonia!
By early July, we felt like we could make enough bouquets for a little self-serve roadside stand at the end of our driveway and had a lot of fun with it! We experimented with wrapped bouquets and jars but found wrapped jars to be the way to go for us! Our roadside flower stand brought us so much joy and we are looking forward to having it bloom and grow next season!
Lavender is such a beautiful perennial and the hardest part about growing it, is that just when it looks it’s best, you must harvest it! We tried distilling it this year which was a really interesting experience! North Stills in Barrie, Ontario has an amazing selection! It works with one vessel with water boiling, steaming the second vessel stuffed with lavender! The steam drips through the tube into a funnel shaped to collect the hydrosol (lavender water) as well as a tiny amount of essential oil. The whole process is fascinating! We also distilled rosemary! Next year we may try making oregano oil!
At the end of the season, each flower produces tons of seeds. You can harvest the seeds, package and label for next year! If you are considering a cut flower garden, no matter what size, go for it! I promise it will bring you so much joy! Is it spring yet?
