6 summer annuals to grow and press in your zone 5-6 cutting garden

Every spring, I carry trays of seedlings out to the garden and set them in the dirt, and every spring I feel the same anticipation. These tiny plants will reward me with armloads of flowers in a couple of short months. Some of them will end up in vases. Some will go straight into the press.

If you garden in zones 5 or 6, you might assume the season starts winding down in early fall. The opposite is true for the flowers in this guide. Cosmos, dahlias, and zinnias actually hit their stride in late August and bloom through mid-October, sometimes later if frost holds off. Your garden peaks right when everyone else thinks it’s over.

And the garden itself becomes something worth lingering in. A patch of zinnias and cosmos humming with bees, butterflies drifting between dahlia blooms, a hummingbird hovering at the nasturtiums, ladybugs crawling up sunflower stems. It’s the most delightful part of my year, and I want to help you build one of your own.

This is the companion guide to my hardy annuals article, which covers 10 cool-season flowers you can sow as early as February in zones 5 and 6. The flowers in this guide are different: they need warm soil, hate frost, and thrive in summer heat. If you’re growing for pressing, you need both groups to keep your press stocked from spring through fall.

A little about me: I’ve been growing cut flowers since 2018 and pressing professionally since 2021, with over 350 wedding bouquet commissions under my belt. Everything I share here comes from years of trial, error, and a lot of pressing paper.

These are guidelines. The best way to learn what works in your garden is to experiment.

Equipment: You’ll need a flower press (and ideally a microwave press) to get the most out of these flowers. Check out my articles on the traditional press and my seed-starting setup for the equipment I use myself.

Know your zone: Not sure which zone you’re in? Enter your zip code at the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.

List of flowers covered in this article (click to jump to the respective section):

Before we dive in, I wanted to share two techniques specific to cutting gardens that will reward you with a bounty of flowers: pinching and harvesting.

You’re just snipping off the growing tip of a young plant to force it to branch out instead of growing straight up. One stem becomes two. Two become four. You end up with a bushier plant that produces roughly twice as many flowers.

Here’s when to pinch each flower on this list:

If you’ve never pinched a plant before, your instinct will be to leave it alone. Cutting into a perfectly healthy seedling feels wrong. Do it anyway. Your future self, surrounded by twice as many flowers, will thank you!

Here’s something most people don’t realize about cut flowers: the more you cut, the more they produce. And not just a few extra blooms. Cutting deeply and frequently into cosmos, dahlias, and zinnias triggers the plant to send out new branches from lower nodes, which extends its productive life by weeks.

The keyword is deeply. Don’t just snip the flower head off the top of a long stem. Cut the stem as much as 12” deep or more, above a leaf node lower on the plant. This feels aggressive, especially early in the season when you don’t have many stems to spare. Do it anyway. The plant will respond by branching out from that node, and within a week or two you’ll have multiple stems where there was one.

Basil works the same way. Every time you harvest stems for bouquets or pressing, the plant branches from below the cut. A well-harvested basil plant looks nothing like an unharvested one. It’s wider, bushier, and produces far more material.

The practical upside for pressers: you get more flowers for the vase and more flowers for the press, and the plant rewards you by producing even more. It’s the rare situation where taking more actually creates more.

Pressability: ★★★☆☆ (Intermediate)

Zinnias have a personal hold on me. My daughter brought home a zinnia seedling from school in 2018, a small, fateful gesture that meant more to me than she’ll ever know. Zinnias were my grandmother’s favorite flower, the one I remember best from her garden in Romania. That single seedling started a chain of events that led me from a corporate desk to a pressed-flower studio.

From a practical standpoint, zinnias are one of the most productive cut flowers you can grow. They germinate fast, grow fast, bloom fast, and if you keep cutting, they keep producing until frost takes them down. The color range is staggering, and they hold up beautifully in the vase.

Pressing them takes a little more thought than tossing a daisy in the press, especially the large double varieties. The trick is knowing which varieties to grow for pressing, and how to deconstruct the big ones when you need to.

Smaller, single-petaled varieties are the easiest to press. Zinnia marylandica types (like the Zahara or Profusion series) and the Oklahoma series have thinner flower heads that press flat without much fuss.

For larger varieties like Benary’s Giant or Queen Lime, plan on deconstructing them. Carefully pluck petals in a systematic way to thin the flower, removing evenly from different sections so the result doesn’t look lopsided. Or press petals individually and reassemble them into mandalas or abstract designs. This is actually one of my favorite things to do with zinnias. A single large bloom gives you dozens of individual petals to work with.

The Queen Lime series deserves a special mention. Those unusual lime-green and blush tones press into colors you can’t get from any other flower.

For pressing whole, harvest smaller varieties when fully open. Use the wiggle test: grab the stem about 8 inches below the bloom and give it a gentle shake. If the stem is firm, it’s ready. If it’s bendy, wait another day.

For deconstruction, timing is less critical. You can take large blooms at full maturity and work with them on your pressing table.

The foliage. Zinnia leaves are rough-textured and sturdy, and they press into handsome dark green shapes. They’re especially useful as a base layer in arrangements.

Darker colors hold best. Deep reds, burgundies, and dark pinks maintain their intensity well. Lighter colors like white and pale pink will fade more noticeably over time. The unusual shades in the Queen Lime series tend to mute slightly, but they still look gorgeous because the starting point is so distinctive.

Generally, expect good color retention for the first year, with some fading after that. Darker shades can hold well for several years.

Those thick, layered centers on double varieties. They hold moisture and will mold if you don’t address it. Zapping in the microwave press before transferring to the traditional press helps enormously. Change pressing paper every 48 hours for the first week.

If you’re pressing large doubles whole (without deconstructing), thin the petals first. Pull them evenly from around the flower so the remaining petals lay flat without too much overlap.

Pressability: ★★★★☆ (Beginner-Friendly)

Cosmos are one of the most satisfying flowers to grow from seed. They germinate quickly, grow tall without complaining, and produce an almost absurd number of blooms once they get going. And here’s the best part: they actually prefer poor soil. No fertilizing needed. In fact, if you fertilize them, you’ll get a big leafy plant with hardly any flowers. So save your compost for something else.

For pressing, cosmos are about as easy as it gets. Those thin, flat petals press quickly and cleanly, and the delicate, feathery foliage is beautiful in arrangements. They’re the kind of flower that makes beginners feel like experts.