Planting bare-root wallflowers
A burst of hot colour will brighten dry spots, says Ruth
OF all the spring flowers we use to pack our gardens, my perennial – or rather biennial – favourite are the wallflowers.
These yellow, gold, burnished beauties with their bushy growth and delicious peppery scent, fire up the spring days like nothing else.
They are biennials and can either be sown in late spring for autumn planting out, ready for flowering the next year, or bought in autumn as bare-root plants. I usually favour the latter route, buying a bunch of newspaper-wrapped plantlets for less than £2 from my local town centre garden shop.
Perennial wallflowers such as purple ‘Bowles Mauve’ and the more pinky ‘Winter Orchid’ are increasingly popular and incredibly long-flowering, to the point where I can’t remember when our ‘Bowles’ hasn’t been in flower.
Keep them shapely and prolific by regular trimming and if they start to get too leggy, propagate by softwood cuttings during the growing season.
If you decide to plant bare root, make sure you soak their roots in water and get them in the ground as soon as you can, digging planting holes the same depth as their roots. They will sit through winter in temperatures well below freezing before growing and flowering the following year.
Wallflowers may look wilted in frosty and windy conditions during the midst of winter, but should soon perk up. If the leaves yellow in winter it is probably a reaction to the cold and they should recover. If not, check for root problems and remove diseased plants.
Wallflowers are susceptible to the disease clubroot that affects other members of the brassica family. Liming soil and starting plants in pots and planting them out when they are more mature can help avoid the problem.