Growing cool-season annuals can be tricky. Lisa’s book Cool Flowers, online course Cool Flowers: Beyond the Book for Flower Farming, and the free video Book Study & Planting Guide companion can help you grow a beautiful spring garden for your enjoyment and a cash crop to sell! Founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online. Award-winning
It’s All About Timing
Returning home from travel to my Cool Flowers garden is almost as good as reuniting with Stevie and Tuc. The bupleurum plants pictured are just one of many cool-season hardy annuals that are patiently sitting and waiting for their time to shine in my spring garden. Since they were planted at the optimal time for
The Secret Sauce of Growing Cool-Season Flowers
I stumbled into learning about cool-season hardy annual flowers a couple of decades ago. My interest had been sparked by flower farming and I wanted to jump in with both feet, but we were heading into winter, what now? While I knew practically nothing about farming at this point, I did know this: I
Cool Flowers and Row Cover
Floating row covers in action in winter. We have whipping wind for most of the winter and spring. Just imagine if the plants had to take that wind. Using row cover on Cool Flowers plantings can help more seeds sprout when planted in the garden, bring spring blooms a little earlier, protect seedlings from hungry
Cool Flowers: Sowing Seeds in the Garden
There is no better group of flower seeds to try your hand at sowing in the garden than those cool-season hardy annuals that we call Cool Flowers . Many of them are really easy to get started when planted outdoors into the cool and moist conditions of fall. First, not all seeds like to be
My Favorite Self-Sowing Plants
Who are these flowers? The cool-season hardy annuals that light spring on fire and are some of my favorites. I’m talking about some of the better known flowers like bachelor buttons, poppies, and larkspur along with some unknowns like bupleurum and the famous but what seems unattainable bells of Ireland. What is a self sower?