Planning a Front Yard Cut Flower Garden - Two Rights And a Left (2024)

Today was such a fun day spent planning a front yard cut flower garden in our very empty front flower beds. Currently, it’s January and it’s so cold and dreary outside here in Texas. It’s so exciting to think that, pretty soon, we’ll have gorgeous Spring weather and flowers.

If you’ve been following along, you may recall we did amajor overhaul to our front yard last year, removing a ton of stone and overgrown shrubs in massive front flower beds and replacing it all with a few shrubs and flowers and lots of mulch. It was a massive transformation! With a new baby at home, it took us longer than expected to finish the beds and we ended up having to plant pretty late in the season. Several plants died over the summer from the extreme heat and we are still crossing our fingers and hoping some of the plants come back in the spring. Currently, the beds look pretty empty but I’m hoping with the spring we will have plenty of color and beauty with the project I’m sharing today.

Setting Up A Grid For My Cut Flower Garden Plan

To begin planning for my front flower bed garden, I used Adobe Illustrator to create a grid on a 12 x 11 art board, the length and width of my flower bed. I added lines at every inch of the art board, creating the grid.

Using the assumption that every inch is one foot in my garden really helped me to visualize the spacing and count of different plants that I need. If you’re better with paper, you can download a pdf version of my grid here to print and then print your flower photos or draw them.

Determining Sun Tolerance Requirements

Next, I needed to determine sun tolerance requirements for my flowers. The location of this cut garden will be on the sunny front-right side of our home so I’ll be checking the back of my seed packets for full-sun only flowers.

Identifying My Garden Style

In addition to determining sun tolerance and creating a basic grid system to work with, I wanted to make sure I had a vision for the theme or style I was going for. I did some looking around on Pinterest and I’ve included a few examples of what I’m going for as far a my garden style. I really wanted to stick with purples, pinks, yellows and whites. My style is definitely more cottage garden style. You’ll notice how in both of the pictures below, the flowers are planted in groupings, not just an individual flower here and there, which is a mistake I’ve made in the past. There’s also not a whole lot of space between them and you’ll see that in my plan.

My Garden Style

Sticking to a Budget

Finally and most importantly to my garden planning was my budget. I didn’t want to spend a fortune on these flowers and plants. It can be easy to spend several hundred dollars in one weekend trip to our local nursery. I’m willing to put in the extra labor to save the money by choosing to start these flowers and plants from seeds.

My Front Yard Cut Flower Garden Plan

Please note that this post and plan has been updated based on my seed germination success for Spring 2020 and access to plants due to closures and Stay-at-Home orders.

• Sun Tolerance Requirements: Full Sun
• Plot: 12 ft. wide x 11 ft. deep

For each plant below, I based my placement and the size of the images based on the height of the plant and spacing requirements. Some of the plants might seem a little close together but with a cottage garden style, I really want them to be snug.

Next Steps

Based on this visual, I not only have an idea of what my garden could look like but also about how many plants I’ll need. Since most of these flowers will be grown from seed, seed starting is up next.