Summer arrangement

This is a fun time of year in the garden, because we can go out any time of any day and just cut as many flowers as we want to bring in the houses. REAL floral gardeners grow all sorts of bouquet greenery and fillers also, to create full, rounded-out bouquets. But I guess I just like the loose mix of flowers, such as in the vase below.

What a wild bunch! A litle bit of everything: sunflowers, cosmos, aramanth, and zinnias.

I am REALLY loving the little sunflowers and need to grow more single-stem, cuttable ones like these. It’s partially the varieties you choose - many “branch” out more, but I like the single stem so I can cut and bring them in the house. The behemoth giant yellow sunflowers are too tall and also create the nastiest, hardest-to-remove giant root balls you can imagine. So they make fall clean-up a pain.

Apparently what keeps sunflowers smaller for cutting (beyond the basic variety choice) is just planting them closer together. I usually sprinkle mixed sunflowers in all over the place, but next year I think I’ll find a dedicated bed just for closely-planted sunflowers only for cutting.

I am also in LOVE with these red/pink/yellow zinnias - they go so great with the sunflowers and the other colors in this arrangement. Ironically I still have no idea what variety they are! What I planted was supposed to be a tall marigold - that was what was on the package. But this is what I got and no one can quite identify it perfectly (including AI). But they are a great contrast to the all-pastel zinnia bed I created this year, so I will keep trying to solve the mystery!