“Cut and Come Again” Flowers Are My Secret to a Garden That Blooms All Summer Long

I’ve always loved having fresh flowers in my home. From a young age, I was enamored with the blooms in my grandfather’s garden. He seemed to have the magic touch when it came to keeping rose bushes flourishing and hydrangea shrubs looking fluffy and cloud-like. During my decade in New York City, I made weekly trips to the 28th Street flower district. Sometimes I’d spring for a bouquet of quirky anemones or vibrant poppies, but mostly I was just happy to surround myself with the vibrant colors and fluttering petals.

You can imagine, then, that the first thing on my mind upon buying a house in the suburbs was a ginormous flower garden overflowing with every variety imaginable. The reality, though? Far from that. 

Turns out, growing flowers is hard work — especially if you’re a novice like I was, trying my hand at seed starting, and soil pH, and worm castings (which is literally worm poop), and aphid control, and all the other things you need to know to successfully grow a bouquet’s worth of blooms. 

After an abysmal first growing season, I knew I needed to start smaller, but the idea of having to choose ho-hum flowers just because they were easy to grow didn’t excite me. That is, until I discovered the beauty of “cut and come again” flowers. 

Put simply, “cut and come again” flowers are plants that are repeat bloomers. While some flowers — think tulips, daffodils, lilacs, and certain roses and hydrangeas — bloom just once a season, “cut and come again” flowers will deliver beauty all summer long, making them a bouquet lover’s dream garden addition. 

Even better than that, these blooms tend to be especially forgiving for beginner gardeners. They often require less specialized care and won’t punish you with brown leaves or a wilting plant if you happen to snip the wrong stem or forget about them for a day.

In the end, “cut and come again” flowers ended up being my ticket to a bountiful harvest. Before I knew it, my garden was exploding with beauty and, beyond the typical watering, I barely had to give it much thought. The best part? The more you snip “cut and come again” flowers, the more they bloom. It’s like some kind of sorcery. 

Since that first year, I’ve amassed a reliable roster of blooms for my cutting garden, including zinnias, cosmos, amaranth, and snapdragons. Many of these varietals can be directly seeded into the garden (so no worries about starting seedlings in February), and all of them will produce a bevy of blooms all summer long. Dahlias are also another one of my go-tos; they’re grown via tubers that you plant in May and can be dug up at the end of each season and stored throughout the winter. 

The end result? With a little planning and hard work (if you can even call it that), I can now guarantee my garden — and my vases — are filled with fresh flowers, all summer long.