Top of the poppıes
Flamboyant and joyous, the huge petals of oriental poppies give the June garden a carnival tone, says Monty Don
THERE are no more flamboyant splashes of colour in the June garden than the huge petals of Papaver orientale – the oriental poppy. It is not subtle or elegant but it is joyous and completely right in the clear light of early summer.
The first to appear in my garden – although, for some reason, two weeks later than an identical plant just down the road – is ‘Beauty of Livermere’ and it immediately sets a carnival tone that most other poppies emulate, although a few like ‘Patty’s Plum’ have a sophistication and air of elegant mystery for all their sumptuous size.
They are not all brashness. Dashing as they are from a distance they repay intimate study too. The huge bud bristles with hairs, and as it opens the petals spill out like a silk ballgown, revealing a deep plumcoloured interior.
Our garden oriental poppies come from a mixture of half a dozen different species that combine to provide the material for the cultivars. These started out a vermilion red but breeding has refined and added to the range of colours available.
If you like the earliness and good upright qualities of ‘Beauty of Livermere’ (and I certainly do) but prefer it in pink then ‘Big Jim’ has all these qualities but flowers that are a deep, almost magenta pink. ‘Goliath’ is blood red and, as the name suggests, huge. ‘Curlylocks’ has very black blotches and petals that look as though they have been artfully shredded, as do the rather fuller petals of ‘Turkenlouis’.
‘Wisley Beacon’ is a good orange, as is ‘Allegro’, although the latter is short and needs to be at the front of a border. ‘Karine’ is a genuine apricot (albeit blotched with red) which is a rare flower colour, ‘Cedric Morris’ is a smoky pink and ‘Black and White’ is – you guessed it, a ruffled white with black splodges.
Whatever their colour, all oriental poppies thrive on the same growing regime. For a start they should be supported to stop them falling over their neighbouring plants and reducing them to a soggy mush. As with all staking of herbaceous perennials, the time to do this is before they need it, as a plant that has been rescued from the horizontal never looks quite the same again.
If you leave the flowering stem after the flower has finished a seed pod forms which in due course will scatter its seed. However, it is better to remove it and all the leaves, cutting back to the base as soon as flowering has finished. This will let in light, air and water, and encourage it to regrow to give you a second flowering later in the summer. It will also create room to plant annuals or tender perennials like dahlias or penstemons that will hide the absence of poppy.
If you want to reproduce the same flower colours the easiest way is to lift the plants in autumn, divide them and replant the pieces. They also take easily from root cuttings.
This is a slower method but much more prolific. Lift a plant in August or September or in early spring and cut off sections of root about the thickness of a pencil into 5cm (2in) lengths. Cut the bottom of each length at an angle and push them into a gritty peat-free compost around the edge of a pot so the flat tops are level with the surface. Water them and put them on a windowsill, in a cold frame or a cool greenhouse. When new growth appears pot them up individually and plant them out next spring. n
If you’d like more advice from Monty Don, visit www.mymailgarden.co.uk/monty.