Flower farmer Joanne Feddes offers her top tips for creating a floral arrangement from the ground up.

1. Choose the right location.
The majority of flowers love sunshine, so site your plants in a warm spot. Most homes have a suitable microclimate near the south-facing side of the house.

2. Plan the layout.
If you have the space, you can plant orderly rows. But for a small urban plot, clustering flowers of all kinds, country garden style, will work better.

3. Select blooms accordingly.
Grow long-stemmed flowers like hollyhocks and alliums for bouquets and short-stemmed blooms, such as pansies, for posies. Consider giant blooms ("Café au Lait" dahlias or sunflowers), delicate classics (like cosmos), spiky flowers (spirea) and bobbing pompoms (gomphrena) as well.

4. Don't forget the fillers.
To boost hues and enliven the textures of your arrangements, plant some pretty fillers. Dusty miller is a go-to, but you can get creative with herbs, such as dill and fennel, too.

5. Create interesting arrangements.  
Let creativity be your guide as you combine your yield into arrangements. Here are a few considerations: Height lends grandeur; big bold displays provide elegance; diminutive posies add charm (especially in a workaday vessel like a pitcher); single stems look chic and modern.