After February blues
When the frosts are over, plug gazanias into your garden for a full-colour show, writes David Overend.
February is usually the coldest month of the year; lots of ice and (depending where you live) plenty of snow. Some plants are stirring, but summer is still a long way away. So, to cheer yourself up, fastforward to May, then June, July and even August, and envisage all the colours, all the scents that can be enjoyed with just a bit of planning.
Forget about sowing seeds – plant plugs have become the big sellers because there’s no need to mess about filling containers with compost, fiddling with the tiny seeds and encouraging them to germinate. Plant plugs are ready to go, although best kept somewhere safe until the threat of frost has finally finished.
And there is no shortage of treats on offer – pelargoniums, cosmos, sweet peas, or nicotiana as well as the ever-popular sun-loving marigolds, begonias, petunias and gazanias. A riot of colour in just a few names...
Gazanias come in a variety of colours – RedShades being flavour of the month – tolerates drought, enjoys the seaside air, flowers vividly even when it’s pouring, and the brighter the better seems to be the theme.
They do best in a moderately fertile, humus-rich, well-drained soil, so it pays to spend a bit of time working to produce the ideal growing environment.
Gazanias tend to grow quickly and flower for a long time – two more reasons why they have become so popular in the past few years.
If you are fortunate to live somewhere where the last frost occurs in May, then you could well have flowers from then right through until late October, sometimes even November.
Gazanias aren’t the hardiest of plants; they are often cultivated as tender perennials, but most gardeners dispose of them when winter approaches and buy new plants the following year.
Gazania flowers are eye-catching and bright, and come in a range of colours, often with the addition of attractive markings. Free-flowering by nature (even when the sun is not shining), they will produce even more if they are deadheaded regularly, from the base of the root to the top of the plant.
And they are just as attractive in containers as they are in beds and borders, so there’s really no reason not to grow them.