Get ahead now before things mature with these extra colourful seasonal suggestions
Let’s inject a riot of colour into our plots by using summer bedding. Although there is plenty flowering at the moment, with peonies, iris and roses at their peak, gardens can start to flag a bit as the summer goes on. If you plant out summer bedding plants now, they will lift your spirits and bring flamboyance and perkiness to your garden in July, August and September.
In fact, many of these plants, if looked after well, will keep flowering until first frosts when they can then be discarded. Their disposable nature allows you to experiment with your planting, giving you freedom to change your colour scheme year on year.
They will dry out easily in their trays so the trick is to have your pots, containers or the ground ready prepared so they can go straight in.
Like all plants, they will perform better in well-prepared soil – dig out stones, weeds and add a loam-based John Innes compost if your soil is poor. Water the plug or small plants before and after planting, and maintain this regularly.
These plants are all about blossoms, so feed often with a liquid food high in potash – for example, tomato feed – to encourage flower production.
Avoid high-nitrogen feeds as these will encourage leafy growth at the expense of flowers.
Here are my top five bedding plants for this season:
NICOTIANA SYLVESTRIS (FLOWERING TOBACCO)
Don’t be fooled by neat trays of bedding available at the moment, these South American beauties will grow as tall as 5ft!
They’ll do well in moist soils and are handy for filling areas with partial shade.
The flowers are long skinny tubes opening to white starry petals and emit the most delicious fragrance when dusk falls.
Plant in pots near the patio or your favourite night-time spot in the garden – perfect on a balcony for apartment dwellers.
There’s also a more compact version with lime-green flowers.
COSMOS
If you have a border that needs filling and you’re not sure what to do with it, a good temporary and inexpensive solution for summer is to fill it with Cosmos.
It’s an easy-to-grow half-hardy annual with lovely ferny foliage and tonnes of pink and white daisy-like flowers, with a long flowering season.
They make excellent cut flowers as well, so are handy for filling vases.
ANTIRRHINUMS
Better known as snapdragons, these are a great way of providing instant colour and filling gaps in borders.
Much loved by children for their open-and-snap-shut flowers, they are also a favourite with bees for their nectar.
Choose from tall elegant varieties such as ‘Admiral White’ or more compact ones like ‘Black Prince,’ which has deep velvety red blooms.
Best in full sunshine.
IMPATIENS OR BUSY LIZZIES
These suffered a downturn in popularity due to their propensity for downy mildew.
However, breeders have been busy developing mildew-resistant New Guinea varieties to replace the muchloved plants.
They’re so useful as they do well in