Susie’s Garden
Poppies can deliver a vibrant splash of colour, and the many varieties now available can be enjoyed year after year
Fragile in appearance, but tougher than they look, field poppies used to be a common sight in cornfields. They are seen less often now because of farmland herbicides, but they do still pop up, especially where soil is disturbed. When a new water main was being laid near my house, there was a wide red swathe of field poppies showing where the work had been carried out!
Field poppy seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to 80 years and will germinate when deep excavations, such as the water board works, bring them to the light. It’s why they flowered in the mud of the battlefields of WWI and became adopted as a symbol of Remembrance. It also explains why poppies grew in the first year of making a garden here, when we disturbed soil that had not been worked for 40 years.
To be successful with growing annual poppies you need to work the soil finely before sowing and water it well. The seeds need good contact with soil and water as well as light to germinate. Because they can be quite variable, gardeners have been able to select different coloured strains of this once-common “weed”. The pretty pastel Shirley poppies originated with seedlings found in the garden of a vicar in Shirley, south London. The dramatic ‘Ladybird’ poppies have black markings at the base of each bright red petal. New this year, I’m trying ‘Pandora’ from Chilterns Seeds, with double flowers in a mix of burgundy, pale pink and silvery stripes.
The opium poppy, also known as the breadseed poppy, is an altogether larger plant. Also an annual, it ranges in colour from palest lilac, through rich pink to deep plum purple. Some have frilly petals while others have white markings at their centres. They’re a favourite plant of bumblebees which forage among their huge silky petals. This year I’m growing the poppy ‘Lauren’s Grape’ from Suttons which has velvety plum purple flowers with black central markings. The seed pods are a lovely shade of frosted jade, fading to brown. Attractive outlined in frost, I leave them in the garden all winter, where they can self seed, so the cycle begins all over again.