Seasonal bedding rethink
Longer-flowering new plants create a challenge, says Peter
SEASONAL bedding traditionally consisted of autumn-planted forget-me-nots, or wallflowers under-planted with tulips and polyanthus with muscari, all stripped out late May, to be followed by frost-tender summer-flowering begonias, zonal geraniums, petunias, salvias and so on. The arrival of winter-flowering pansies and violas changed things, flowering well into summer.
The shrinking size of gardens in new housing, wider use of patio pots and the longer flowering season provided by modern hybrids have changed things.
The latest pansies such as ‘Cool Wave’, ‘Dynamite’ and ‘Premier’ flower for much longer (well into summer) and were still flowering freely in July this year. Similarly, Primula ‘Everlast’ (from Suttons), which may look like a free-flowering wild primrose but is far from it, and double Primula ‘Belarina Series’ are hardy perennials flowering from September through to May and beyond. It is easy with such plants in containers, but planted in borders it is a tough decision to pull them up to make way for summer flowers.
Polyanthus and double primroses in the past were lifted in May, split and planted out in a moist, semi-shaded
position to grow on, ready to be bedded out again in September/ October. Now such summer bedding plants as Begonia ‘Big’, Begonia ‘Megawatt’ and petunia hybrid Petchoa ‘BeautiCal’ flower well into November, given an open autumn, this poses another difficult problem.
One option is to leave the overwintering and May plantings in place, thin them out a little and introduce interplanting. Preliminary trials amongst primulas are working well; it remains to be seen how Primula ‘Everlast’ (interplanted with Begonia ‘Sweet Spice Bounty’), Primula ‘Belarina Series’ (under Venidio arctotis) and Polyanthus ‘Crescendo’ (amongst acorus) perform in their second winter/spring. It would be easier if a hard winter killed tender summer flowers. A plant of Pelargonium x hybrida ‘Calliope’ close to the house wall survived last winter, and has grown into a very large plant this summer.
“Do you pull them up to make way for summer flowers?”