The Practice of Hortus: Cutting Garden Course, March
As Spring arrives in the full flood of her beauty and promise, March is an ideal time to start creating a cutting garden for a wonderful palette of summer blooms. This day, led by our Senior grower, Caroline, will give you an insight into what and how we grow at Hortus.
We will introduce you to our seed sowing and propagation techniques, discuss succession sowing, greenhouse management for healthy plants, our palette and how we achieve the characteristics we want our stems to have through staking and netting.
This is the moment to take cuttings from later flowering plants such as dahlias and chrysanthemums. Together, we’ll explore our propagation techniques, and you’ll take home a tray of freshly prepared cuttings to nurture and grow on. In addition to the seeds you’ve sown and the cuttings you’ve prepared to take home, you’ll receive a selection of our overwintered cutting garden staples (not plugs). These established plants will reward you with the earliest possible flowers, alongside the profound pleasure of tending others from seed to maturity.
We will also spend time in Gillie’s cutting garden, considering its design, what we grow there and why, and how to plan for a succession of stems throughout the season and beyond.
Our florists will guide you through the art of the curated pick, how we select stems from the season to create texture and detail using both foraged and grown materials, and how we cut and condition each one for longevity and beauty.
As always, your day will include a full tour of the farm, rarely open to the public, and a lovely homemade lunch.
