Beds of bright brilliance
Spring bedding is a versatile and easy garden addition
BEDDING plants are available from garden centres and online retailers now, and will work anywhere – in borders, baskets, containers and window boxes.
Planted now, they will give you some glorious colour while summer’s blooms are fading. Plants then stop growing through the worst of the winter weather before springing back to life when conditions improve and the weather gets warmer in spring.
Bedding uses the weeks between late summer and the onset of seriously cold winter weather to put down roots, mature and bed in properly.
Having dotted a selection of pansies, violas and bellis daisies grown from seed around the borders, I decided to use the leftovers in a patio pot.
I used peat-free multi-purpose compost and added a couple of handfuls of granular fertiliser to keep the plants healthy and performing at their best right through the next six months or more.
Unlike planting summer bedding in pots, I didn’t add water-retaining gel to the compost as drought isn’t usually a winter issue, and even if there are dry spells, lower temperatures mean the compost won’t dry out as quickly. I interspersed my bedding plants with early flowering chionodoxa ‘Pink Giant’ bulbs that will pop up among the cyclamen, echeveria, violas and heucheras. Always raise your pots on feet to allow excess moisture to drain away. If it waterlogs the compost it forces out the oxygen supplies, causing roots to ‘drown’, and if it freezes it will expand and can crack the container.