Next spring and every spring
There’s a lot of value in short-lived perennials, says Peter
APOUND or two spent on a packets of seed at this time can fill your garden with colour and, in some cases, sweet perfumes next spring/early summer, and many springs to come. If you want fragrance then sweet William, sweet rocket (Hesperis), wallflowers, and East Lothian and Brompton stocks should be on your shopping list.
Usually listed under the biennial heading, being sown now to flower next year, quite a number are short-lived perennials, and if prevented from setting seeds will often grow on to flower on larger plants in their second season of blooming. Foxgloves, sweet William, the stocks and even wallflowers come into this short-lived perennial category.
Even so, with the exception perhaps of aquilegia, most of the plants are at their best when treated as biennial and allowed to self-seed; once they have done this, they are likely to pop up in the garden year after year, for many years. Forget-me-nots will certainly do this, and while I often forget to sow them, our front garden is never without the lovely blue flowers when the tulips are in bloom. My grandfather would regularly state, “Every garden should have Honesty!” Here is another plant worth leaving to set seeds, so the silver seed pods can be collected after seed fall for use with dried flower decorations, and self-seeding ensures plants for future years. It is worth paying a little extra when initially stocking the garden with this excellent range of spring-intosummer flowerers.
Take aquilegia: the Songbird Series plants have elegant long-spurred flowers in attractive bicolours, and featured regularly in specialist displays at past Chelsea Shows. Similarly, the higher priced packets of wallflowers will have better colour ranges – and stocks, if you pay more, should have more double- flowering plants.
“Every garden should have honesty!”