Anyone can grow cut flowers.

There are many varieties that are easy to grow and hard to kill, making a homegrown cutting garden realistic for any level of gardener.

But you need to know what to grow to have the most success, especially when you’re dealing with a harsh climate. You need to know what makes a flower variety good for cutting versus landscaping and what specific climate factors you will battle or benefit from.

Marks of a Cut Flower

Stem Length

A flower that makes it to a vase needs to be long enough to fit in a vase. Many cut flower varieties are 24 inches or taller in mature height. Make sure to check any packaging or product descriptions before buying what you think is a common cut flower variety – some flowers like zinnias, dahlias, and snapdragons come in different heights, some being better for container or border planting, while others are meant for cut flower production.

Vase Life

Once a flower reaches a vase, it should stay there for more than a day or two! Some flowers are beautiful, but just don’t last long once they’re cut, and others will only achieve that long vase life with a bunch of special treatment.

Poppies, euphorbia, and hellebore are some types of stems that greatly benefit from being seared or plunged in boiling water. Woody stems like hydrangea, lilac, viburnum, or eucalyptus need special care when cut to not crush the stem. Daffodils leak toxic sap that can kill other flowers in the vase. When beginning a cut flower garden, I’d recommend to stay away from any flower that requires special harvesting treatment to increase your chance of success with having long lasting bouquets.

Growing Requirements: Time + Temperature

Finally, there are some flowers that are just more finicky to keep alive and grow to maturity.

Some flowers require periods of freezing and thawing that is hard to replicate when starting indoors. Larkspur, Bells of Ireland, snapdragons, phlox, poppies, sweet peas, and rudbeckia all require going through freeze-thaw cycles to break their dormant period (called “stratification”). If just beginning your gardening journey, these varieties are best planted outside in the fall or late winter instead of battling breaking their dormancy indoors.

*Many early Spring flowers like Bachelor’s Buttons, larkspur, snapdragons, and nigella (all pictured here) germinate much better with cooler conditions to break them from their natural dormancy.*

The simplest way to tell if a cut flower will be easy to grow is how long the plant will take to mature. The “days to maturity” listed on a seed packet or catalog description tells you how long a flower takes to go from germinating seed to a mature, ready-to-harvest flower. The shorter time period this is, the easier the plant is to grow.

This is really a matter of common sense – if there’s less time to grow it, there’s less time to kill it.

The most well known example of this is lisianthus: it’s a beautiful flower, but it’s slow growing and takes something like 200 days to mature. That’s a lot of room for error, especially compared to the 50 days it takes for a sunflower or 70 days for a zinnia to be ready.

Environmental characteristics of the high desert

The last thing I’d consider myself an expert on is climate and geology, but living in a wild climate like the high desert made research necessary if I wanted to be a successful gardener or farmer.

Humboldt County, Nevada, is located within the Great Basin, the region East of the Sierra Nevada range which spans the width of Nevada and ventures into other states, especially Utah. There are many mountain ranges reaching several thousand feet in elevation, creating valleys between them. The sharp decline from the 14,000 foot peaks of the Sierra Nevadas into this region creates what is known as a “high-elevation desert.”

High-elevation deserts are a climate classification that is relatively rare, with only the Great Basin, Tibet, and the Andes being cited as examples, and even those regions vary widely on their specific characteristics.

What remains the common factors in these areas are a high elevation (4000+ feet) and minimal rainfall (less than 10 inches per year, or generally “dry”).

Impact on Weather and Growing Conditions

The result of this combination is not a constantly sweltering desert like the Sahara, but temperatures that dip much lower (although Summer temperatures in the Great Basin still remain high, mostly due to its inland location).

This means if you live in the Great Basin, you’re less likely to consider your region as a “desert” because it’s not sandy and constantly hot like the Sahara or Death Valley.

But, because most high-elevation deserts lie in the rain shadow of a mountain range, rainfall is sparse, which further impacts the weather patterns with a lack of humidity. In coastal regions, the humidity serves as a temperature moderator, as water retains the heat and creates milder temperatures. In the desert, air temperatures can heat and cool quickly without the presence of humidity, causing wide swings between day and night temperatures.

Lack of humidity, especially in the Summer months, leads to hot days and much cooler nights. This makes for pleasant mornings, but the major swings can be difficult when it comes to gardening and annual growing.

For this reason, the growing season in the high desert is shorter than you might expect just based on daytime temperatures. While temperatures might reach 75*, there’s still a chance of frost at night, which is very different from temperate coastal climates where the temperatures don’t change much more than 10* overnight.

With this in mind, it’s important to know your frost dates, not just your USDA Zone (more on that in a previous post, “USDA Hardiness Zones, First & Last Frost Dates, and Your Growing Season”).

This also means you need to think holistically about what plants to put in the ground at what time. Just because it’s 75* out does not mean zinnias or tomatoes will thrive yet, because frost (or even close to freezing temperatures) will set them back early.

On the other side, just because the nights are still dipping down to 40* does not mean your cool weather plants like ranunculus or cabbage will still be producing, because the 80* daytime temperatures will cause them to shut down or to bolt.

These wide swings make for short traditional growing seasons, and which make traditional succession planting difficult. Many growers suggest doing multiple successions of plants like zinnias so that once your first planting gets tired, you have a second planting to replace it.

In my experience, by the time a second succession is maturing, the season is changing again. Instead, look to plant multiple times a year, but plant different varieties each time. For example, plant Bachelor’s Buttons, larkspur, and other very cold tolerant plants early; put snapdragons, sweet peas, and moderately hardy plants in the ground a few weeks later; zinnias, celosia, and other heat lovers are planted for summer production; finish the season with another succession of cold hardy annuals to last into the cold nights before the hardest freezes.

Zinnias, Sunflowers, and snapdragons are traditionally planted several times over the course of a single season in areas with longer growing seasons (called “succession planting”). In the high desert regions with shorter seasons, only one or two successions can be done without needing season-extension structures like frost cloth or tunnels.

With this method of planting, you’ll have an extended flower season (or vegetable, substituting food plants appropriately), but without running into the difficulty caused by rapidly changing temperatures and growing seasons.

The final characteristic of the high desert is swift changes in elevation, the rise and fall of mountain ranges and resulting valleys, which makes for natural wind tunnels. Many areas within the Great Basin battle unrelenting winds, especially in the Spring.

To have the most success growing in the high desert, be prepared to stake your plants, make sure your greenhouse or shed structures are very secure, and get ready to work in the wind, because if you wait for the wind to stop, you’ll be out of time!

Without proper staking, the high winds in Northern Nevada will take out taller crops. Installing netting or planting wind breaks is necessary to prevent crop damage due to leaning over and breaking due to the high desert wind.

Best cut flowers for high desert: Annuals and Perennials

Wild temperature swings, high winds, and low precipitation can make finding plants that thrive in the high desert difficult to find.

Generally speaking, perennials are the best option. They can develop large and deep root systems, making them withstand drought best. In landscaping, it makes the most sense to find plants that closely resemble flora that naturally occurs in the region. Examples of these include Russian Sage, Juniper, and Ornamental Grasses (just make sure they aren’t invasive!).

Many of these varieties don’t make good cut flowers, though. Perennials for cut flowers that do well in the high desert are those that are drought tolerant and can also tolerate poor soil:

Yarrow
Echinacea
Rudbeckia
Coreopsis
Sedum

Annual plants generally require better soil and more water, though there are some varieties that can still thrive in the high desert. Five of the top annuals for cut flowers in the desert are:

Larkspur. Larkspur occurs naturally in the desert landscape, making it an easy choice. It develops a long taproot, which makes it more drought tolerant, but also makes it more susceptible to wind damage when young.
Marigold. Drought and heat tolerant.
Cosmos. Can withstand periods without water, tolerates both high and low temperatures, and thrives in poor soil.
Zinnia. Thrives in high heat. Most growers struggle with powdery mildew, but the high desert’s low humidity and high winds means this is not an issue!
Sunflower. Tolerates both high and low temperatures, and has an extensive root system for water management and preventing soil erosion.

If you live in the high desert and are considering starting a cut flower garden, being educated on what your climate holds is the biggest key to your success! But with a smart combination of annual and perennial plants that tolerate this climate well, you can create a beautiful outdoor space that you can also bring inside, even in the desert!

Michelle VanderHoek owns and operates Willow Creek Flower Farm, which opened in 2021. Located north of Winnemucca in Orovada, NV, the farm provides locally grown flowers and select nursery plants, as well as beginning gardening and cut flower tips. Find more gardening advice, flower farm content, and buy locally grown bouquets @willowcreekflowerfarm on Facebook and Instagram.

Growing Cut Flowers in the High Desert