In part of our garden I have a strip, which because of its sort of hidden
location, I used for a few vegetables. But repeated trips away meant I was
either unable to tend them or, even worse, to harvest them. What is more I
found they demanded a disproportionate amount of my gardening time.

So this strip has laid fallow for a few years. But it looks so untidy with
nothing growing in it that I have decided to give it over to flowers grown in
rows for cutting for the house. This means I shall be able to mulch them to
keep the weeds down.

My problem is that although I have a reasonably good gardening experience I
have never grown flowers for cutting. My first thoughts are sweet peas,
chrysanthemums and dahlias (things I don't currently grow in the rest of the
garden) - even though I have no specific knowledge of the best varieties of
these.

But there must be other things that I haven't thought of, so any suggestions
you can make would be most welcome. Clearly they should be things that are not
an enormous amount of trouble otherwise I shall be back where I started.

Derek Carver
Oxshott, Surrey