The cutting garden in mid-July.

The designs for these pint-size cutting gardens, employs the same 1 ft. x 1 ft. thinking that we brought to the vegetable garden in our Kitchen Garden Planner. There's nothing special about the dimensions of these two garden designs — these are just the dimensions of the beds we had available in our display gardens here in Burlington, VT. It should be easy to adjust these plans to suit whatever space you have available in your own garden. We allowed for a 1-foot wide path down the center.

Most of the garden was planted directly from seed. We planted the seeds as soon as possible after any danger of frost had passed. The flowers that went in as plants were the verbena, ageratum, salvia, snapdragons and feverfew. These plants all grow from tiny seeds, and you may find — as we did — that it's easier to deal with them indoors under lights or in the greenhouse. We planted the dahlias as tubers (before they had begun to sprout) and the glads went in as corms (bulbs).

Feel free to substitute with your own favorite flowers. For other good cutting garden candidates, check out the related articles, below.

Cutting Garden 1

This garden is designed for a 7-foot by 7-foot planting area. Each of the 14 sections measures 1-foot deep and 3-feet wide. In most cases, we put 6 plants in each section (about 2 plants per 1-foot x 1-foot area). The sunflowers were not planted as densely.

Cutting Garden 2

This garden is designed for a 7-foot by 8-foot planting area. As above, each of the 16 sections measures 1-foot deep and 3-feet wide. We planted just one dahlia tuber per square foot.