SOME OF US plant a row of particular annuals with the intention to cut them for bouquets in their moment of bloom, and some of us think bigger and have a whole cutting garden within our landscape.
I feel like ceramic artist and passionate gardener Frances Palmer thinks biggest of all and that every plant in her extensive gardens—not just the tulips, zinnias or dahlias that you might expect, but even the herbs and her flowering vines and branches of ornamental trees and shrubs—are all fair game for having their moment in a vase someday at her place.
Expanding your interpretation of the phrase “cutting garden” was the topic of our recent conversation, with plant ideas and tips for success.
Connecticut based Frances Palmer is a well-known ceramist and gardener, author of the 2020 book, “Life in the Studio: Inspiration and Lessons on Creativity,” and creator of a popular Instagram account, too. Her newest book is “Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden” (affiliate links).
Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of her latest book.
Read along as you listen to the June 16, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
the cutting garden, with frances palmer
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Margaret Roach: The new book is “Life with Flowers,” and that was kind of fun; the previous book was “Life in the Studio,” and now it’s the one with flowers. And you write in the introduction to the new book about what you call this sort of “symbiotic relationship between flowers and your ceramics.” I love how you describe that. You say, “I consider pottery and the flowers as two halves of my earthly paradise.”
Frances Palmer: Well, yes, I think so. I mean, it really evolved over time. I started learning photography and growing the flowers for documenting my work. But as the years have gone by, the flowers are so essential to my whole world and psyche, and so I find them so important for making the work, and I’m always thinking about them when I’m sitting at the wheel.
Margaret: Yeah. So in your garden I think there’s two primary parts. The original part was a circular kind of enclosed fenced-in area, and then you transitioned a tennis court [laughter] into 30 raised beds, I believe.
Frances: So I have both gardens going simultaneously, and the round garden that has the same kind of rinky-dink fence that I put up over 30 years ago, we’ve had to replace some of the posts, but it’s pretty much the same. So that functions primarily for the dahlias. And then around the perimeter, inside the fence, I have some of the old roses and the peonies, and there’s kind of a shade garden and lots of annuals.
And then the tennis court has really just gotten completely out of control [laughter] with lots of roses like the David Austin, the reblooming ones, and a lot of natives have crept in, and then all the dahlias and a lot of perennials and a lot of annuals. So it’s really…I call it my survival of the fittest garden.
Margaret: Well, we talked about dahlias before on the show. You have a method of growing them and supporting them and so forth; how you have so much success with those.
But I have to confess to you that I rarely remember to cut bouquets of fresh flowers to bring indoors. As long as I’ve been gardening and as many plants as I have, I’m one of those people who you come to my house and there’s no fresh flowers in the house. I am crazy about seedpods. I have a whole bowl of all dried green bean pods. And the tree peonies, the seedpods—the sort of star-shaped ones that they leave behind and all kinds of bits and bobs, and I’m kind of one of those kind of people. Although I will say one flower I do bring in every year right at the beginning of the season when I plant them: I love to have teeny little vases of pansies or violas.
Frances: Oh yeah, that’s so lovely.
Margaret: It’s like tiny, tiny, tiny, and it’s so sweet on the little windowsill, I’ll line them up with just a couple of violas or pansies in each one [laughter].
Frances: Yes, I totally understand. Well, but bringing up the seedpods is a good point, because I do try to… I mean, I love all phases of the flower. I love it when it’s in its bud, and of course when it’s in its wonderful blooming stage, but also as it fades away. I think that all stages are equally beautiful.
Margaret: They really are. So even earlier than I have the little pansies and so forth, I have a lot of hellebores, and I see you have them in the book, and I never really knew what was the best way to get them to last as cut flowers—do you condition them in some way? I’ve seen people float them in bowls of water, just take the flower itself, and do things like that. But what do you do with them?
Frances: Well, I mean, I think one of the great advantages if someone is able to grow their own flowers—and of course the book isn’t really specifically about that sort of person—but if you do grow them and cut them, I think they last so much longer. But if they do, sometimes they just wilt. You put them in a vase and they just bend over.
But the best way is to just take them out of the vase and put them in a bucket, the entire flower. Just submerge the whole stem plus the bud in cold water and let it—sometimes people pierce the stems with a pin—but if you just put that flower in a bucket and let it kind of resaturate, usually it comes back to life again. You shouldn’t think just because it’s wilted that you’ve lost them. They can be revived for sure.
Margaret: And that’s true with other things too as well?
Frances: Just, it’s kind of a flower by flower thing. Every flower has its own eccentricities. And again, the benefit of living with them kind of like people, everybody has their own style, and some flowers like their coffee and some prefer tea. It just depends.
Margaret: Well, it’s worth experimenting then. I had been reading your book, and I was outside the other day in the garden, and like I said, I’ve just confessed that I don’t bring flowers in a lot. But I was weeding in the vegetable beds and I had some self-sown asparagus fronds, baby young asparagus plants that weren’t making spears, but were just making those sort of fern things. And so I was yanking them out and I looked at them, I thought, “Oh, these are kind of pretty.”
And then I noticed nearby there was, I have a smokebush, the one called ‘Grace’ that kind of has bronzy foliage, which I love, and in a windy event the other night, I guess a little branch had cracked, not a big one, but a little piece. And I thought, “Oh, well, I’ll prune that off and maybe I’ll try that, too, because Frances tries things like that.” [Laughter.]
Frances: Totally.
Margaret: So I brought them in and I put the two of them in the vase-
Frances: And were you so happy?
Margaret: Yes, and it’s still there. And it’s funny; it’s really funny. So sometimes the oddest gleanings, right?
Frances: Yeah. I mean there’s so many things in people’s yards or properties that I’m sure that they don’t really think about so much, and I try to use, especially smokebush or even because the asparagus frond, although it’s got a very feathery leaf, the actual stems are quite stiff. So I like to use those in vases as the foundation as opposed to using more floral devices, chicken wire and all that stuff. I really try to avoid all of that in a vase ,and just use the material itself, because if you have a great stiff stem, like the smokebush or something, it’s going to hold up the other flowers that come in afterwards.
Margaret: So speaking of branches and so forth, it’s not that you have a row of shrubs, your favorite shrubs for cutting, and you’re taking off all their branches every year or anything. You’re just, like when I had this little serendipitous moment where I saw this thing that needed to be pruned, and so I ended up utilizing it. You’re doing this discreetly, I assume you’re not maiming your shrubbery [laughter].
Frances: No, no. Especially for something like the witch hazel, that’s one of the first things to bloom in the early months after the wintertime. These trees are often slow-growing, so you don’t want to take off major pieces. I try to be really careful. Now I have that beautiful pink dogwood blooming, so I really think about how I’m cutting because I want everything to keep growing and flowering. But it’s amazing. You can do it pretty easily if you take your time and look at the tree and think about how you could harvest from it and use it in a vase, but yet not do anything to the tree to keep it from blooming next year.
Margaret: You had one arrangement in the book with a little bit of Japanese maple, a dissected-leaf Japanese maple, and that was just like, oh my goodness, it was so beautiful [photo, top of page].
Frances: I mean, I have that Japanese maple in the front yard, and so I always, again, I look at it: Where can I cut? And then I’ve discovered over on the other side in my actually elderberry bush, there’s a volunteer Japanese maple.
Margaret: Yes, I have them too [laughter].
Frances: And now I’m like, “Oh, yay, where can I put that one?” So I’m going to dig that up this weekend and move it somewhere else. But the foliage of everything is really great to use and often really lovely, and adds so much to the dimension of an arrangement.
Margaret: So we’ll talk about different foliage besides from branches of woody plants in a minute. But before we get off the subject of the woody plants, do you condition those stems? Are you a hammerer of the ends of the stems, or you don’t hammer or slice them, or what do you do?
Frances: I’m really bad. I mean, if I cut lilac, sometimes I’ll cut the stem open so that the water can get in easily. But I’m pretty simple. I don’t do a lot of conditioning of anything. I don’t really condition the poppies. I just kind of plunk everything in the vase and it still seems to do O.K., and the same thing with peonies. I just strip off the lower leaves of the peonies just so that it allows more room in the vase and that sort of thing. Same thing with cutting roses, I tend to strip off leaves, but not a lot of conditioning, no.
Margaret: So I see the same lists of “cutting flowers” everywhere. If you do a search or you look in catalogs or whatever, what’s recommended. But you seem to see—as we’ve been talking about—sort of see everything as a possible candidate, given the right vase and the right companions. And it was fun to see, for instance, that you’re growing gladiolas, which years ago when I started gardening, everybody did. It was something that you always had some of them, and they’ve sort of maybe gone even a little out of fashion. I don’t know. I don’t hear so much about them. And yet you do sort of staggered plantings for successive harvest, don’t you?
Frances: I think gladiolas are just such a joyful flower. Yes. And you can buy them online. They’re not expensive bulbs, and if you plant some every two weeks, they’ll kind of keep blooming through the season. And theoretically one could stake them so that they grow straight.
Homegrown gladiolas are so vastly different from the commercially grown ones, and they just have this great sensibility in a vase. And if you pluck off the blossoms that have finished, then the new ones keep opening in the vase. And lots of times when I run out of time and I haven’t staked them, then they get really wonky. I love that, too, where the stem bend and so they’re kind of draping out of a vase, and I think they’re just such a great flower to have, and it’ll come back next year. So even though I do tend to add new bulbs, I can already see the old ones coming up in the garden.
Margaret: How late can I plant, if I was just getting started—I mean, obviously I would’ve started a little before now, putting them at first.
Frances: I think you can plant them now. I mean, in some places the frost date has just happened. Definitely. And they’re still available for sale, so I would definitely, you could do it now for sure.
Margaret: I think in the book, you group them in with what you call “fantastic spires.” Is that the right group?
Frances: Yes.
Margaret: And to think about flowers by their sort of structure, their shape, what they add—and in this case a vertical element, a linear and vertical element—to a potential arrangement. So there’s some others that you highlight.
Frances: Verbascum is one of them. Hollyhock, all of these great ones, they have just wonderful color. And also, again, one of those stiff stems, that’s a good support for some of the looser flowers, but if you’re trying to get height in your arrangement—and I usually add them at the end, so I’ve got everything going and then you just kind stick them in at the end—and they have this great drama to them.
Margaret: Yeah, definitely foxgloves, that’s another one that comes mind. And yet I don’t think about cutting it. Do you know what I mean?
Frances: I have foxgloves that volunteer—those kind of deep fuchsia ones; I think there’s a photo in the book. all over the property—and I just cut three of them yesterday. Sometimes I stand in front of them and I make myself cut them. [Laughter.] When something is so beautiful, I just make myself do it because it’s just me kind of sitting there looking at everything, and this way if I’ve put it in something that I can photograph, I can look at it all the time.
Margaret: You also, in the book, you point out you have some pollinator plants, and I think you have some native plants as well. So it’s not, again, just that sort of list—dahlia, zinnias, tulips. It’s not that list—peonies—that’s a classic interpretation of cutting flowers, is it?
Frances: Right. No, and especially in the autumn months when everything is kind of reaching its crescendo, I find I love those blue asters, which are native, and there’s so many different shades of asters now. And the ageratums that are native, and of course the goldenrods. And there’s so many great native plants that can be incorporated with the annuals. And I just feel that it gives it kind of a new breadth rather than the more sort of, as you say, the classic list of annuals. It just sort of adds a lot of dimension.
Margaret: So doubling back to foliage, I mean, I should have always thought about it, but I haven’t ever really used ferns in an arrangement. And yet you have some beautiful examples of that in the book. Now, do they hold up? Any tricks for that?
Frances: For that or they, I mean, I’m very bad at the trick thing because I don’t really do tricks.
Margaret: So then they do hold up.
Frances: They do hold up. Another great support system in the vase, and there’s so many different kinds, are coleus. I just love planting coleus. And even though they are technically annuals, they’re so easy to kind of cut at the end of the season and bring them in the house and root them in water and keep them as a houseplant over the winter if one has that time and energy. But you can go to a plant nursery and coleus are fantastic for filling in those spots in the garden where their holes, but then using the leaf in an arrangement is really fun.
Margaret: What I love about them, besides those qualities of ease and sort of cooperative nature that you just described, is that a single leaf can kind of guide you to a palette. You know what I mean? If you don’t have confidence in design, if you don’t feel artistic or whatever, particularly, well go get a coleus leaf and let it guide you to what else to put in there.
Frances: That is a great thing to discuss because it does. Again, you can get the chartreuse or those kind of dark chocolate-reds. Sometimes they have all those colors in the leaf, and that is a great guide,
Margaret: Yeah. I learned the hard way just this last couple of weeks that… I got a lot of different coleus after I had written a time story about a coleus breeder, and I had ordered from some places that he recommended, and I was so excited about all these unusual coleus that I got, and I learned the hard way that woodchucks really like coleus [laughter]. Like Woody decided that there was a coleus buffet at Margaret’s house.
Frances: Oh my goodness.
Margaret: And Woody has… so Woody and I have parted ways. The local licensed trapper moved Woody down the road a piece.
Frances: Oh, well, that’s good.
Margaret: Other day. But he was very determined that all he would eat was coleus nonstop, basically.
Frances: Did they revive or do you have to-?
Margaret: It’s funny. They do. Just as you said, they’re very willing to resprout, so to speak. So even if they’re beheaded or whatever-
Frances: And that’s why they’re great for cutting, because you can take off stems and they just keep going till frost. It’s fantastic.
Margaret: So maybe he was just trying to help me. Is that what you’re saying [laughter]?
Frances: The woodchuck? No, nature can be evil. There’s a rabbit that lurks around my garden.
Margaret: Oh, they’re the worst.
Frances: Yeah.
Margaret: They’re so cute though. But they’re really naughty when it comes to…so voracious.
So other foliage: So you use ferns, and again, we all have some, and it’s just like, wow, what it does to an arrangement is just breathtaking. And you just said coleus, hosta leaves.
Frances: Well, I mean clematis, the hyacinth vine, all those different vines; I use those as well. I’m just trying to think.
Margaret: Yeah. Well, that was interesting too, because I wouldn’t really necessarily think to cut a stem piece of a vine, but drooping out or cascading out of the arrangement, it gives it this whole other dimension, in the same way that the fern as the backdrop, how sort of behind the arrangement is another element. They each have this architectural role as well.
Frances: I mean, another leaf that I love is amaranth, and you can get so many different kinds of amaranths. The leaves have great color, the stem is very sturdy, and then you have those beautiful colors of the flower that kind of drapes, depending on which kind did. But I mean, one of my favorites is ‘Hot Biscuits,’ which is that deep kind of ochre; big, thick. It has the flowerhead, and I can literally see the birds sitting on the amaranth, and it’s their bird feeder all summer long.
Margaret: Interesting. I have hardly ever grown the amaranths, so that’s a good tip. ‘Hot Biscuits,’ huh?
Frances: Yeah, I love ‘Hot Biscuits.’ That’s very sturdy.
Margaret: And then there was a big perennial, the yellow wax bells, Kirengeshoma palmata, that has some of the most unusual leaves of any perennial I’ve ever grown. It’s kind of a shady perennial. So really unusual leaves seem to attract your attention.
Frances: Definitely. And the yellow wax bells, the actual flowers comes right around the same time as the dahlia. And also that particular plant in my garden was given to me by a friend, so I have enormous attachment to it. So every year when it comes back, it just makes me so happy that it’s just sitting there. And I love, the leaves are great to use and the flowers when they come. But as you know, when you’ve traded plants with friends, it has a whole different dimension than when you go and you buy it from a nursery.
Margaret: I wanted to just say, speaking of buying things from nurseries, the bulb catalogs are already starting to arrive for fall-planted bulbs. I mean, we haven’t even officially barely reached summer [laughter]. And there’s a lot of bulbs in your book and that you cut from. I just wanted to sort of say, are there any that you ones that we should think about adding?
I added a lot of little guys this last fall. I thought, O.K., I can do that; It’s not a big project. You know, at the foreground of beds and so forth. And some of them, just like my little thing with tiny vases of pansies, there’s nothing like in early spring, there’s nothing like having tiny little charming creatures.
Frances: Like muscari. And also you can get some quite small, delicate daffodils, which are great because the animals won’t eat the daffodils. So you can really plant those anywhere. And they do have some of those early Cyclamen, not Cyclamen, early Narcissus—is that the word I’m looking for?
Margaret: Those are the daffodils, but-
Frances: Yeah. The beautiful little yellow ones.
Margaret: Oh, the Cyclamineus types, right. I think that’s what it is. It’s a word like Cyclamen, but it’s, yeah…
Frances: I don’t have it right in front of me. I can only see it.
Margaret: I know, it’s not a word we use a lot [laughter].
Frances: And the muscari also, and you can get those beautiful, delicate rock iris. Rock iris are great. And of course the hellebores will be early, but the bulbs, the bulbs. The species tulips have a much more delicate stem, but they’re not as early bloomers, the species types, but they are beautiful in smaller vases. The Fritillaria, the checkerboard one, the meleagris, is a beautiful one for a small vase.
Margaret: So those are some possibilities. So it sounds like you’re also on to the small ones; the small ones are attracting me right now. Maybe it’s because I have a lot of larger things already in the garden and the areas at the perimeter, it’s a great place to put something.
Frances: What I love about those small ones is if you have them, you can really contemplate them. As wonderful as the big arrangements are for me, sometimes by my wheel, I’ll just put just like what you’re saying, a small vase with just a few of these really treasures that you think, “Oh my gosh, they actually came out of the ground,” and you can sit with them. And that to me is really, really special.
Margaret: Well, it’s been good to talk to again, and what you just sort of evoked for me was another line in the book where you say: “Together the unyielding clay and the flowering plants, each fragile and temperamental, form a bond.” [Laughter.] And it’s exactly it. It’s almost like the yin and the yang; two qualities. You know what I mean? The two qualities. So happy gardening season, Frances. I hope all goes well over the air and that you don’t have too many rabbits.’
(All photos from “Life With Flowers;” used by permission.)
enter to win a copy of ‘life with flowers’
I’LL BUY A COPY of Frances Palmer’s “Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden,” for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:
Any favorite foliage or flowers from your garden find their way into vases at your place?
No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll pick a random winner after entries close at midnight Tuesday, June 24, 2025. Good luck to all.
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prefer the podcast version of the show?
MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the June 16, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
