I have a confession to make: I am a spreadsheet girl. As we jump back into our Garden Planning for Success series, today we’re using a spreadsheet to plan “What to Grow” for our big goal (????If you’re joining now, there are links at the end to all of the posts in this series!)
The next planning step is: create a sheet with a column of dates on the left and a row of categories on the top. The dates will reflect the weeks that you’ll produce bouquets, and the categories at top will be: Focals, Fillers, and Foliage.
Focal flowers should be the showiest blooms in your bouquets. You might want anemone or peonies in June, sunflowers alternating with dahlias in July-Sept. You could add in a week of asiatic lilies at any point(s) for variety!
Choose 1 focal flower variety and put it in the cell for each week of bouquets. For our goal, we will need to have about 45 focal flowers available for each week of bouquets, 3 per each bouquet.
Next, we will need 5-8 stems of secondary blooms for each week of bouquets. That’s a little over 100 filler stems per week. (We made a whole post about our favorite filler flowers if you need some inspiration.) I might choose a larkspur mix, cerinthe, feverfew, and a calendula mix in June. There are SO many choices, but remember to keep it as simple as possible, and (Pro Tip:) utilize color mixes for bouquet variety over your month of blooms. You might choose to plant gladiolas or snapdragons, a cosmos mix, and Queen Anne’s Lace for mid-summer, and maybe a zinnia mix, amaranth, and asters for September. Remember to limit your options within your chosen palette. Choose 2-3 filler varieties for each week and add them into the spreadsheet.
Finally, include at least one foliage item for each week, and list 2-3 stems of it in the foliage cells. (See the free TWF 2022 variety plan for inspiration!)
And WOW – just look how much progress you’ve made! This simple plan is enough to provide for plenty of beautiful bouquets.
A spreadsheet for this task might seem too detailed, but this is truly the way I approach planning production for hundreds of bouquets a week.
Come back tomorrow for MORE tips on choosing which varieties to grow in each category, (and get ready to add more columns to your spreadsheet)!
Other Posts in This Series
- Making a Plan for Success in Your Cut Flower Garden
- Push Through Fear and Make Your Gardening Plan
- A Brief History of Triple Wren’s Humble Beginnings
- Your Reason for Growing Flowers Matters
- Our Bouquet Palette for 2022
- Start Big and Work Small for Successful Garden Planning
- Don’t Fall Into the Trap of Trying to Grow Everything
