TO GROW AND
OFFERING VIBRANT BLOOMS, HEAVENLY FRAGRANCED GERANIUMS ARE A DELIGHT ALL SUMMER LONG
BY rights, I should be sick of geraniums. Aged 15, my first job in the local parks department was helping to take 15,000 geranium cuttings between July and September to provide a colourful display on the town’s traffic islands the following summer.
Three of us would sit in the potting shed, surrounding a sheet of sacking on which were piled the shoots taken from the existing plants that were decorating Ilkley’s smarter thoroughfares.
We’d prepare the cuttings so each was 4in long with one large and one small leaf at the top, and cut cleanly beneath a leaf joint at the base. The embryo plants were then dibbed in around the edge of clay flowerpots filled with cuttings compost, on top of which had been spread a layer of sharp sand.
All that effort, and I still love them. Nothing can beat them when it comes to ease of cultivation or ability to oblige with masses of flowers. All they need is brilliant light and free-draining compost. They’ll even allow you to forget about watering for a few days.
Then there is the sheer variety of type and colour. The zonal pelargoniums we grew in such quantity (so named because of the horseshoe-shaped zone of darker pigment on their leaves) have double or single flowers that may be any colour, from crimson and scarlet to orange, pink and magenta, white and even the occasional pale yellow.
The single-flowered varieties will bloom all year round and the doubles from spring to summer.
Regal pelargoniums have a shorter season but are easily forgiven thanks to their spectacular flowers that are often splashed and striped. Ivy-leafed pelargoniums, meanwhile, are great in hanging baskets and window boxes, flowering from May to the frosts.
But the scented-leaved pelargoniums are closest to my heart. Their leaves are redolent of anything from nutmeg to lemons, peppermint and roses. ‘Madame Nonin’ is perhaps my favourite, since it also has beautiful pink and crimson flowers. ‘Lady Plymouth’ has fingered leaves that are variegated pale green and cream, and Pelargonium crispum ‘Variegatum’ has spires of tiny variegated leaves that are pure lemon zest. Few pelargoniums will let you down, and between now and autumn, all will cheer you up with their brilliance or dreamy fragrances.
Nothing can beat them for ease of cultivation and masses of flowers