Sarah Raven: A Year of Cut Flowers
What Sarah Raven Taught Me About Growing a Life with Cut Flowers
Ep. 90: Sarah Raven, The Woman Who Changed How We Grow Flowers
It was late in the evening in England, and early afternoon here in the Columbia River Gorge when Sarah Raven’s face appeared on my screen. Behind her, I could imagine the garden at Perch Hill just starting to wake up from winter. And for the next hour, she shared thirty years of wisdom so generously that I had to sit with it for a while before I could even begin to write about it.
If you grow flowers, you probably already know Sarah’s name. Fourteen books. A beloved podcast. A garden that people travel from around the world to visit. But what I didn’t expect was how grounded and honest she would be about the journey that got her there.
How a Wildflower Diary Planted the First Seeds
Sarah’s love of flowers started with her father, a Cambridge botanist who was fifty years old when she was born. From the time she could walk, he would take her to see wild Pasque flowers and snake’s head fritillaries across the English countryside. She kept a wildflower diary from age seven, recording each plant, the date, the location, and whether she had seen it before.
“It really got me to learn the Latin names from a very early age,” she told me. “So I’m sort of bilingual in Latin names, just because like learning a language, if you do it when you’re young, it’s really easy.”
That image stopped me. An old father and a little girl, crouching in a meadow, writing the name of a flower in a small rectangular book. Sometimes the most life-changing moments look like nothing special at all.
She is now planning to do the same with her first granddaughter. And it reminded me of my own daughter discovering wild camas on our new twenty-acre property this spring, those little purple flowers popping up everywhere while she wants nothing to do with our dahlia patch. Some seeds take longer to sprout.
Cut Flower Gardening Tips from 30 Years of Growing
Liveheading: The Technique That Changes Everything
Here is something Sarah said that I have never heard anyone put into words this way. She talked about “liveheading” instead of deadheading. When you deadhead, you cut off a spent bloom and toss it on the compost pile. When you livehead, you cut at the same point, but the flower is still in bud, showing color, ready for a vase.
The effect on the plant is identical. The growth hormone hits the cut point, pushes out auxiliary buds to make next week’s flower, and pushes out the roots to make a stronger plant. But instead of throwing beauty away, you are bringing it inside.
“I found that the garden looked better for me harvesting,” Sarah said. “I was replenishing the garden by taking from it.”
She calls it an “ever-filling cup.” And honestly, I think that is the most beautiful way I have ever heard anyone describe cut flower gardening.
If In Doubt, Pinch Out
Sarah’s pinching advice is simple and memorable. At the three-leaf stage (not the seed leaves, not the next set, but the set after that), pinch out the growth tip. At that point, the root structure is strong enough to handle it, and you will promote auxiliary bud formation that gives you more flowers and longer stems.
Her rhythm: pinch at three-leaf stage, pinch again at planting out, then start harvesting about ten days later and keep going.
One thing she emphasized that I appreciated: only cut the stem length you actually need for your arrangement. If you are making a small bud vase, do not cut a long stem and then trim it down at the table. Every inch you cut below those leaf pairs delays the next flush of flowers.
Annuals and Dahlias Outproduce Everything
Sarah spent years measuring production from meter-square blocks of different plants. The result was clear: perennials are low maintenance but very low production compared to annuals and dahlias. That is why she has devoted her life to annuals, biennials, and dahlias.
“You can literally have a window box or a pot on your doorstep and you’re going to get repeating cut flowers,” she told me.
For anyone starting a cut flower garden with limited space, that is the most encouraging news. You do not need acres. You need the right plants, the right technique, and consistency.
What the Local Flower Movement Looks Like Across the Atlantic
When Sarah started growing cut flowers thirty-five years ago, 95% of the flowers sold in the UK were imported. Today, it is moving toward 50/50. Here in the US, we are still at about 80% imports, so we have a longer road ahead. But both of us agreed: there is absolutely room for more flower farmers.
Sarah’s advice to anyone thinking about starting? “Work out your market first. Don’t start until you know where your market is.”
She found her early market supplying hotels, pubs, and cafes with a bunch a week, delivered straight from the garden with no middleman. That directness made it financially viable. When she started scaling and adding staff, the economics got harder, which is ultimately why she pivoted toward seeds, tubers, and teaching.
That honesty matters. The path is rarely a straight line.
Sarah Raven’s New Book: A Year of Cut Flowers
Thirty-one years after her first book, The Cutting Garden, Sarah has written what she calls her love letter to cut flowers. A Year of Cut Flowers is organized month by month, covering what to enjoy in the garden, how to condition and arrange it, and what practical jobs to do to keep the abundance rolling.
“It felt like the last book that I’ll do on cut flowers,” she told me. “It’s from everything I’ve learned, from the growing to the conditioning to the arranging. Very simple home arrangements. How to have flowers in your life as life enhancement on a daily basis.”
Her own daughter, who has never shown interest in gardening, picked it up, started reading, and immediately started calling Sarah about sweet peas and dahlias. If that is not the best endorsement a book can get, I do not know what is.
A Year of Cut Flowers is available now at bookstores everywhere. Grab your copy here.
Start Where You Are
Whether you have a sprawling backyard or a single pot on your doorstep, the message from this conversation is the same. Growing and cutting your own flowers is one of the simplest, most life-enhancing things you can do. It does not need to be expensive. Growing does not need to be time-consuming. It just needs to start.
And if you need a guide for the journey, Sarah’s new book is a beautiful place to begin.
Listen to the full conversation on Episode 90 of The Backyard Bouquet Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Guest Bio
Sarah Raven is a gardener, teacher, author of fourteen books, and the founder of a gardening brand rooted at Perch Hill in East Sussex, England. Trained as a doctor, she transitioned to full-time growing after the birth of her second child. For more than thirty years, she has championed seasonal, locally grown cut flowers through her writing, teaching, and her weekly podcast, Grow Cook Eat Arrange. Her latest book, A Year of Cut Flowers, is a month-by-month guide drawing on three decades of growing, trialing, and arranging at Perch Hill.
Resources & Links Mentioned
- Sarah Raven’s Website: sarahraven.com
- Sarah’s Book: A Year of Cut Flowers https://amzn.to/4vhXc41
- Sarah’s Podcast: Grow Cook Eat Arrange
- Sarah’s Instagram: @sarahravenperchhill | @sarahravensgarden
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