Start the winter flower parade
GET READY: PREPARE YOUR SOIL BEFORE YOU SHOP
Burst of colours awaits you at the garden centres.
Just when we think the rain is over, more arrives and the soft, wet soil creates the perfect conditions for planting the winter flower garden. We are spoilt for choice with winter flowers, including many indigenous annuals that will provide pollen and nectar for garden wildlife over the next few months.
Ge ing started
Observe how the sun has shifted and is still shifting. The sun and shade in summer and winter gardens can be quite different, and this affects where we position the plants.
Prepare the soil by removing old summer flowers, digging in fresh compost, bonemeal and fertiliser.
Identify sunny areas by the house or outdoor entertainment areas that are ideal for container plants. In winter, we tend to live closer to the house so it makes sense to bring the colour closer.
Renew existing containers with fresh potting soil (and slow release fertiliser mixed in). By the end of a season, all the goodness will have leached out of the potting soil.
If your family loves homegrown veggies, look at how you can mix them in among the flowers.
Indigenous Pansy pals
Bacopa are showy in containers, hanging baskets or as tough, un-loving indigenous groundcovers that never stop flowering. There is a new variety with much bigger blooms, appropriately called Bacopa MegaCopa and the result is a knockout. The pink, white or blue flowers are double the size of the originals and they glow against the dark green leaves. Plants grow 30cm high and wide; useful as a border or edging plant (space plants 30cm apart). It cascades beautifully if planted in a container, around the base of a taller plant, or in hanging baskets. Plant in full sun to semi shade in rich soil that is kept moderately moist.
Diascia is one of our showiest indigenous flowers. Masses of tiny, delicate flowers cover this compact little perennial for several months. Growing 25cm high, Diascia Romeo is ideal for smaller gardens as a bedding plant, border, and groundcover or mixed with other flowers in containers and window boxes. It grows into a mounded plant and looks good planted with alyssum, and silvery lamb’s ear (Stachys) as a border in front of bulbs or taller winter flowers.
Nemesia are taller plants, and the new Nesia range has bigger flowers and grows 40cm high. The flowers look like miniature snapdragons, and the plants are compact and mounded. They grow in partial shade, and combine well with diascia, spring bulbs, pansies and violas. Nesia Banana Punch is a new bicolour, combining pink and yellow. Other colours in the range are burgundy, dark magenta, yellow, orange, and lavender.
Pelargoniums, especially the trailing ivy geraniums, also like the cooler months. Tacari is a strong grower that produces large, showy flowers about the leaves. These are classic container and hanging basket plants. They don’t like to be over-watered and are colourful low maintenance container plants.
What’s hot in the garden centres
They might not be indigenous but it is hard not to be bowled over by Argyranthemum Madeira. Argyranthemum flower from late spring to early autumn so this is their prime flowering season. As sun lovers, they quickly fill a container or a gap in the garden. If you have space, plant three together in differing shades of pink, or red, or mix white and yellow. The plants hold their shape and don’t fall open.