Get growing flowers with Wallace’s Garden Centre

GET growing flowers with Wallace’s Garden Centre. Mairead, Ber, Mary and Dermot are on hand with all the tips you need but here’s a quick guide to get you started in the garden! Flower gardens can turn any ordinary area into a colourful showcase or create a border that pops.

Whether you choose an easy to manage perennial or a particularly showy annual, growing flowers is a rewarding addition to any back garden or balcony. Selecting the right plants for your flower garden is often a matter of preference, but with so many species and varieties available it can be mind-boggling. Popular and easy flowers to buy and get you started is ‘Dianthus’ a low maintenance flower, which is sometimes better known by its varieties Coronations, Sweet Williams and Pinks, is also a lovely cut flower.

The Dianthus comes in many different shades and shapes. Some of the most popular dianthus available have pink, red or white flowers together and offer a wonderful colour addition to any garden. They like as much sun as possible, and tends to be best planted away from any shaded spot in your garden.

They prefer drier soils, something which needs to be remembered constantly, particularly in winter. When planting place your Dianthus plants 6-12 inches apart (depending on their size). Dig your garden bed so that you loosen about 12 inches of soil and mix in 3 inches of compost. Dig a hole for the dianthus that is twice the diameter of the plant’s container.

Place the dianthus in the newly dug space, and cover its roots in soil, making sure the leaves don’t get covered in earth, put firmly and water. A growing tip to keep your Coronations and Sweet Williams looking at their best is to apply a thin layer of compost to it in springtime and continue to encourage blooming by using an all-purpose liquid fertiliser every 2 months which you can pick up in from Wallace’s Garden Centre!