Growing Joy with Plants - Wellness Rooted in Nature, Houseplants, Gardening and Plant Care · Maria Failla- Happy Plant Lady and Author of Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness

How to Grow Flowers and Create Your Own Cut Garden: Best of Growing Joy Replay

March 26, 2026·55 min·3 clips

One pot of zinnia can change your joy level.

The show dips back into the archives for a Best of Growing Joy replay. Maria brings back a conversation with Brooklyn of Blooming Hill Farms, a Denver-based urban flower farmer and founder of Cool Choice Plant Studio for Kids. The starting point is simple: if you want to be the friend who always shows up with flowers, a cut garden helps. The conversation then turns to how a beginner can get there without turning the project into more than it needs to be. Easy annuals are part of the base. So is choosing a planting medium that fits what you actually have at home. Brooklyn keeps access from turning into gatekeeping. If all someone can buy is a bag of soil and a pot, that is still enough to grow. Grow bags are another useful option. If a gardener has room to build a bed from scratch, that works too. The episode keeps coming back to drainage, nutrients, and the idea that each flower has its own preference. Brooklyn talks about her own clay-heavy soil as a real-world constraint, not a moral failure. Strawflowers are one plant she can simply put out and let handle it. For flowers that want looser soil, she recommends containers or grow bags instead of forcing them into the wrong spot. Compost gets a practical nod too. Some gardeners make their own, while others source it locally. Fertilizing depends on the flower rather than a blanket rule. Dahlias are a useful example because they start in basic potting soil and do not want much fertilizer. Yellowing leaves become a signal to feed, and that opens the door to a simple explanation of NPK. The whole conversation lands like friendly permission: you do not need the perfect yard to grow something beautiful and useful.

As heard by us

A beginner-friendly cut-flower guide that makes gardening feel useful and generous.

Growing Joy with Plants treats a cut-flower garden as something small and useful, not fussy. Brooklyn of Blooming Hill Farms keeps the conversation beginner-friendly, but it still gets into the basics that matter: easy annuals, how a cut garden actually works, and why a few…

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You want a beginner-friendly cut flower bed without overthinking the setup.

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