Own-grown bouquets

Dream of beautiful bouquets of own-grown blooms, and thumbing your nose to the environmentally damaging supermarket bunches shipped halfway round the world?

A good proportion of annuals are perfect for the job and can be threaded through your existing flower borders, vegetable patches or grown in their own dedicated bed.

The two key factors you are looking for if you are growing for the vase are strong stems and long-lasting flowers.

Make sure you get your plants in while they are still young. You want to give them the chance to grow and bush out in the ground. That way you will get a lot more blooms than if you buy them when they are already in flower.