rainbow cutting garden

This small cutting garden will give you weeks of flowers in spring, so that you can create colorful bouquets to decorate the house or give to friends. Because you are cutting the flowers, the bulbs will not have the energy to produce further blooms the following year. This means that you will need to replant the garden again in the fall if you want to create another flowering rainbow.

You will need

• ✿ garden fork
• ✿ rake
• ✿ piece of string, at least 39in (1m) in length
• ✿ tent peg
• ✿ scissors
• ✿ felt-tip pen
• ✿ measuring tape
• ✿ cockleshells
• ✿ a selection of spring bulbs, as follows:
• ✿ tulips, e.g. Tulipa ‘Oscar’ and ‘Brilliant Star’ (red), T. ‘Little Princess’ and ‘Ballerina’ (orange), T. ‘Westpoint’ (yellow), T. ‘Blue Ribbon’, and T. ‘Purple Prince’;
• ✿ daffodils, e.g Narcissus ‘February Gold’; grape hyacinths, e.g. Muscari armeniacum (blue);
• ✿ and blue hyacinths, e.g. Hyacinthus ‘Blue Jacket’
• ✿ small spade or special
• ✿ bulb planter

Step 1

Choose a sunny spot in the garden and fork over a patch of ground, about 36in (90cm) deep by 6ft (2m) wide. Remove any large stones and weeds, and rake it level. Tie the end of the piece of string to the tent peg, measure a 36in (90cm) length, and cut. Using a felt-tip pen and a measuring tape, mark the string clearly at 8in (20cm) intervals. Push the tent peg into the soil at the bottom center-point of the garden. Holding the other end of the string, move it slowly around, placing cockleshells in a line as you go to mark the first arc of the rainbow.

Step 2

Repeat this procedure for every mark on the piece of string, remembering to keep the piece of string taut at all times, until you have five arcs made from the pretty cockleshells.

Step 3

Place the different-colored flower bulbs in the arc of that color, starting with red tulips in the first arc, then orange tulips, yellow daffodils and tulips, blue muscari and hyacinths, and purple tulips. Leave a 2in (5cm) space between the smallest bulbs and a 4in (10cm) between thelarger ones.

Step 4

Using the small spade or bulb planter, plant each bulb at three times its own depth, cover with soil, and firm down. In spring, you can cut your rainbow flowers and use them to make colorful flower arrangements for indoors.

Try this... When you have cut all the spring flowers, reuse the space to plant a rainbow of summer annuals for cutting. For example, try growing red mimulus, yellow and orange African and French marigolds (Tagetes), orange zinnias, yellow pansies (Viola x wittrockiana), and blue and purple petunias or pansies.