There are three grocery stores within a 10-minute drive where I can buy flowers anytime I want, and a farmers' market on Fridays that's close enough to walk to. So it's not like I need to grow my own blooms for bouquets. But I wouldn't think of letting a year go by without seeding some long-stemmed annuals in my garden for cutting. Try it for just one season and you'll understand why. The bouquets you make from garden-grown flowers always seem to have more personality, more cottage-garden softness than ones bought from the store. The occasional curving stem or bug-nibbled petal only adds charm. There are also the advantages of immediacy and abundance. Having a bad day? Walk outside, cut some flowers for your desk, and you're over it. Having a really bad day? Cut enough blooms for every room. While you're at it, snip a bunch for a neighbor or friend—performing an act of generosity always lifts the spirits. Besides, when you grow your own, you can afford to be lavish. The more blooms you cut, the more the plants keep pumping out flowers, instead of setting seeds.

Another benefit of growing your own flowers is variety. No matter how well stocked your supermarket is, there are some great cut flowers you aren't likely to see there — cleome, cosmos, and bishop's lace, for instance. Though they're too fragile to ship, they're a snap to grow. Indulge.

Christina Schmidhofer
Bouquet in the making contains snowy white phlox, cosmos, and bishop's lace.

To come up with the list of the best flowers for cutting, we turned to Beth Benjamin, flower expert at Renee's Garden seed company. We asked her which varieties she would plant in a 5- by 12-foot bed—one small enough to fit into today's smaller yards but large enough to provide plenty of flowers from late spring into fall. Familiar summer classics such as cosmos, sunflowers, and zinnias make up the bulk of Benjamin's flower bed; some quick bloomers, plus some interesting fillers, round out her list. Summer flowers constitute most of the cutting garden Benjamin envisioned (see illustration and plant list), but she also included a few early starters like love-in-a-mist and bishop's weed.

The best time to sow these varieties in most of the West is late March. In colder regions, wait until the danger of frost has passed. That gives you time to decide where you want to locate the flower bed, to prepare the soil properly, and to shop for seeds.

First to bloom are love-in-a-mist and Ammi majus; they'll be cut and gone before other flowers. As summer annuals decline, pull them out and sow spring-blooming annuals like larkspur (Consolida ajacis) and cornflower (Centaurea cyanus).

DESIGN: Beth Benjamin.