Ideas for Cutting Garden

Help!
One of the projects I've given myself while I'm at home is to come up with a list of plants and flowers for the cutting garden at work.
The owners have a few specific requirements:
1. A supply of flowers/foliage all year round. Most of the flowers in our cutting garden at the moment tend to be concentrated in the late spring and summer period, so I'm looking for more autumn/winter/early spring plants.
2. Bright colours. The owners house has quite a dark interior, so they would prefer predominantly (although not exclusively) yellow/orange/reds as these colours work best in brightening the place up.
3. Durability. Flowers which will last for a while after cutting and not droop or fall apart immediately.
4. Hardiness. Unfortunately the whole garden sits in something of a frost pocket, so any winter/early spring plants need to be reasonably hardy. (We lost a couple of established Pittosporums from this part of the garden last winter).
I've trawled through a number of books and websites and I have some ideas of my own. I did start making lists, but a lot of the information I've gleaned so far seems contradictory or not really relevant to what I'm looking for.
It's not a huge space, maybe 30 or 40 square metres of growing area, so I'm really looking for small numbers of plants which will produce as much cutting material as possible without taking up loads of space.
This is beginning to make my head spin!
All suggestions and ideas gratefully received.

 

Firstly, 35-40 sq metres works out at a bed roughly 10 foot x 35 foot if my sums are correct...that's NOT a small area!!

Have you thought about growing flowers in summer to use dried in the winter? This is hopefully what I will be doing next year.

Steve...

 

I suppose I should have it's a relatively small area Steve.
In the context of the whole garden and comparing it with cutting gardens I've seen at other large houses which I've visited, it doesn't seem that big.
Also bearing in mind the owners would ideally like a steady supply of fresh cut flowers or foliage once or twice per week for as much of the year as possible, it was certainly beginning to look small to me!

I had thought of putting in a few annuals which could be used dry in the winter; Teasel, Honesty and Bells of Ireland perhaps for starters, although I'm sure there are plenty of others. As I said, I'm open to suggestions.

 

Astilbie, when in flower provides a nice flower to go into a dried arrangement.

 

Thanks shiney and gcc.
Having fresh flowers available to cut all year round is a bit of a tall order, so I'm hoping to steer them gently in the direction of using a few flowers which can be dried when available and used in the winter.

 

I've often thought I'd like to grow more 'things' to provide cut flowers, not necessarily for me (I can look out of my window and enjoy them), but it would be nice to pick something for 'f and f' sometimes - then, when my elderly neighbour was ill, I decided to just pick some of what I had anyway, so I went round the garden with a pair of scissors and managed to find: Spirea flowers; dwarf delphinium; gallardia; coreopsis; phlox; crocosmia; osteospermum; stocks; lychnis; erysium; geum; malva; armeria; centranthus; scabious; sweet peas, dianthus and gysophila.

With the exception of the last 3, I wouldn't exactly call any of them 'cut flowers' per se, but they made a pretty mixed bunch and lasted much longer indoors than I'd anticipated.

Just some suggestions.

 

Hi there Trunky ,
Another couple of dried flowers would be Statice and Helichrysum


Statice


Helichrysum

Another thing you could do in the winter months as cut flowers will be are pretty well zero .You can cut winter and spring flowering shrubs whlist in bud and bring into a warm greenhouse or shed to force .

Dave