A little introduction to Marieke Nolsen
My name is Marieke Nolsen and I live in Leusden, just south of Amersfoort. I’m a floral stylist and blogger with a deep passion for gardening. Around our farmhouse on the Den Treek-Henschoten estate, we’ve planted 1600 square metres full of flowers. From January through December, I pick the most beautiful blooms straight from our own garden.
After spending many holidays in England and being inspired by countless English gardens — including a cutting garden course by Sarah Raven at Parham House — we started our own English-style cutting garden behind our home in 2016. A garden filled with beautiful dahlias and annuals, supported by natural constructions like you often see in England. Since then, I’ve specialised in this kind of cutting garden. I now give talks throughout the Netherlands and teach workshops on building these garden structures and how to design your own cutting garden. I also run a webshop called Pluktuinkado, offering charming garden gifts that bring English garden vibes not only with flowers, but also with stylish products. Besides all this, I teach weekly floral design classes to groups of enthusiastic women, showing them how to create lush, garden-style arrangements. You can find everything I do at www.mariekenolsen.nl. On Instagram, I share daily floral inspiration, and on my blog, I write longer garden stories. Here, on this beautiful website by Linda and Marlies, I’m delighted to introduce you to our cutting garden.
Right next to our house, you’ll see a patch of land measuring 9 by 11 metres. This is the cutting garden. It’s filled with dahlias and annuals, all grown for cutting. And the more you pick, the more they bloom. These flowers also bloom for a much longer period than most perennials. Take phlox, for example. It’s a perennial that blooms for about four weeks. Once you pick it, that’s it for the season. Dahlias are completely different. They usually start flowering in July and continue into October. That’s ten weeks of bloom, and the more you cut, the more flowers they give. The same goes for many annuals.
Walking through your own bouquet
My goal is to make this cutting garden feel like a giant bouquet, so when I walk through it, I’m walking through my own hand-tied arrangement. That means creating lots of flowers blooming all at once, and lots of variation in shape. Think of round flowers like dahlias and zinnias, mixed with longer, more vertical shapes from annuals like amaranthus and chenopodium. The colours are mostly red, orange, pink and salmon. I love playing with colours — one year I might add a hint of purple, the next I’ll swap it out for soft yellow. It’s like a joyful game. All the dahlias are grouped together in what I call a dahlia structure. This consists of two levels and is one metre tall. Each level is made of woven branches spaced in a grid of 20 by 20 centimetres. This keeps even the tallest dahlias standing straight and strong.
I usually buy dahlias from @famflowerfarm that grow to about 1.20 metres. But in our slightly peaty soil,
they reach up to 1.70 metres. I plant all dahlias of the same height together in the structure,
because shorter varieties would get completely lost in between. The annuals are planted
here and there in smaller beds between the dahlias, with the aim of creating a beautiful
mix of colours and shapes.
Tip:
This cutting garden mix was created using dahlias and flower seeds from FAM Flower Farm
Create a little path through your cutting garden
Next to this picture, you can see the little path that runs straight through the cutting garden. In the flower beds on either side, I’ve planted annuals alongside a few crocosmias. These are also summer bulbs, with slender blooms that appear as early as June — long before the rest of the garden starts flowering. They add a lovely
touch to the garden while everything else is still waking up.
Along the path, I’ve also placed several tippis made from birch
branches. Climbing along these natural supports are sweet
peas (Lathyrus), black-eyed Susan, runner beans, nasturtiums
and Spanish flag flowers. All of these structures are handmade
by me, and most of them I rebuild every spring using fresh
birch wood. You can see one of my birch branch constructions
pictured below.
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Planting dahlia tubers in pots and tubs
As you can see in the photos below, I also plant dahlia tubers in pots and tubs. I absolutely love styling with pots, and even in the middle of the cutting garden, I’ve added several filled containers to bring extra charm.
Make sure to choose a large enough pot or tub, because the tubers need plenty of space and nutrients. In the zinc container shown on the left, I drilled ten holes in the bottom. Then I added a layer of broken pot shards, filled the rest with organic potting soil and planted three tubers in it. The result was absolutely wonderful. I supported these dahlias with a simple twig structure.
In the container shown on the right, I planted a single tuber of a low-growing variety. This one also bloomed beautifully. Organic potting soil might cost a bit more, but it’s packed with nutrients and worth every cent.
So don’t skimp on soil when planting in larger containers.
Create new combinations
Each year, I dig up all the dahlia tubers and store them in crates in the cellar. At the end of April, they go back into the ground. Always in new combinations, which makes it exciting every time. In the photo next to this text, you can see the stunning red Dahlia Show’n Tell, beautifully paired with the soft salmon-pink Dahlia Break Out. These are just two of the 150 dahlia tubers growing in our garden. In the 9 by 11 metre section alone, about 100 tubers are planted.
Styling the cutting garden
As I mentioned before, I truly love styling. Pots and watering cans along the path, garden tables filled with planters, tiered stands — it should never feel overdone, but always with that cozy English charm. Every May, I host workshops titled Styling your garden table. During this workshop, I guide you through the cutting garden, explain how I approach garden styling, and then you’ll create your own climbing structure using twigs in a pot.
Combining dahlias with annuals
I really love how dahlias look combined with annuals. Sometimes the annuals grow so tall that I plant them right in between the dahlia tubers. It already starts to feel like a bouquet in the garden. In the photo below, you can see Amaranthus with its long, hanging, soft red tassels, such a beautiful match with the salmon-coloured dahlias. What a dreamy combination.
Caring for dahlias
Dahlias grow beautifully in my garden. I really cannot complain. We have many birds that help keep the slugs under control, so I rarely have trouble with them. If there’s anything I do struggle with in our cutting garden, it’s the mice. They are here in large numbers and can eat through an entire bed of amaranthus in just one night, as you can see in the photo above on the right. Every gardening season has its challenges. One year it’s too wet, the next too warm, and so it goes.
Regularly remove spent flowers
Be sure to remove faded flowers on a regular basis. This keeps your garden looking fresh and also encourages your dahlias to keep blooming. Below, you can see a combination of dahlias with grasses and amaranthus.
Cutting garden mix by Marieke Nolsen x FAM Flower Farm
What a joy it is to pick flowers from your own garden. It’s such a treat. Here, I picked a mix of salmon-toned dahlias, combined with a few annuals and grasses. I love this colour combination of white and soft salmon. For FAM Flower Farm, I created a similar blend, a mix of dahlia tubers and annuals in creamy white and warm orange tones.
How wonderful it is to have all these bouquets. I always pick my flowers in the morning. I let them rest in a bucket of water so they can fully hydrate, and once they have absorbed enough, I arrange them into bouquets like these. Choosing a beautiful vase is part of the joy because it really completes the look. I must admit, I have quite a collection of vases, but that is where the fun begins.
In my webshop, I offer a lovely and varied selection of vases. These are what I call cutting garden vases, often with multiple openings like the one shown above. I also have sets of Delft blue vases, as you can see below. I like to group them together and fill them as if they were one single bouquet. The combination of brightly coloured dahlias with Delft blue is simply stunning.
Dahlias in a tulip vase
A tulip vase isn’t only for tulips. As you can see below, I’ve used it here for dahlias too. I also added the annual Phlox grandiflora Creme Brulee. This soft salmon flower blooms all summer long and is very easy to grow from seed. It doesn’t grow taller than 40 centimetres and the colour is just perfect.
My book
Together with Modeste Herwig, I wrote a book all about our cutting garden. I pick flowers year-round, and the book is filled with beautiful photos of the garden and the flower arrangements I create from it. Wishing you a wonderful gardening season. I hope I’ve already given you a little inspiration with this blog.
Warm wishes,
Marieke Nolsen
Marieke’s favourite tulips:
Tulip bulbs are available in our webshop from July through early December.
Marieke’s favourite dahlias and annuals:
We offer dahlia tubers from January through early June, and flower seeds are available year-round.
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