Here comes the summer
Garden centres are throwing open their doors and for frustrated gardeners all those shelves bursting with blooms are a sight for sore eyes
GARDEN centres are bursting with blooms in anticipation of summer
For gardeners, whether it’s your job or your hobby, it’s been an extraordinary week. Imagine getting a can of cola and shaking it and shaking it some more. Inside the pressure is building up and you know what is going to happen when you pull that tab. The froth will explode.
For gardeners, the pressure has built up through the most glorious spring. We’ve been stuck at home with perhaps solely our own plots to enjoy.
And now within the space of a week we are allowed to start to work again (with social distancing), we can visit garden centres and other appropriate suppliers, and all around us people are talking gardening.
The Chelsea Flower Show is being run virtually, the BBC has presenters talking gardens from their own plots, and we are enjoying the surge of plants that are suddenly blossoming and available to us.
It appears to be a striking act of normality to be allowed to go and buy pots of colour to decorate our homes. And across the country gardeners have been queuing with trolleys, loading up boots of cars with bags of compost and trays of planting.
I visited my local garden centre to see what was on offer and what was doing well.
The place was awash with flowers and colour. Everything you needed for hanging baskets and containers was on display – begonias, argyranthemums, fuchsias, bedding verbenas and calibrachoas all waiting for new homes to settle into. There were simple terracotta pots planted with instant mini gardens – pink geraniums planted with the deliciously scented Dianthus ‘Pink Kisses’ and a trailing Blue Bacopa to complete the picture. So if you’re looking for inspiration, there’s plenty to admire. Here are some plants that stood out for me as good performers for the summer.
The wallflower section beckoned me over with its perfume. The queen of wallflowers is ‘Bowles’s Mauve,’ an evergreen perennial that in milder areas seems to have flowers all year round. It does run out of steam after a couple of years but it is easily propagated from cuttings so you can replace it. A variety called ‘Fragrant Sunshine’ caught my eye – lots of bright yellow flowers and the smell was really gorgeous. This would be ideal along a path in a sunny spot.
I also spied Salvia ‘Sensation Blue,’ a compact sage which is packed with blue spires of flowers.
Sages are easy to grow, no-fuss plants with aromatic foliage and are good for beginner gardeners. They will flower to the end of September, attracting bees and butterflies. They’re drought tolerant once established, so if our run of good weather continues these will do well. Another good variety was ‘Rose Marvel’ with pretty rose pink flowers which will bloom repeatedly without the need to cut them back. Both these sages are nemerosa types which mean they are hardy in the UK so won’t need lifting.
Geums are cheerful plants that will forgive you if you forget to look after them and will keep delivering flowers all summer long, starting in May and going on through until September.
There are lots of varieties, including the well-known Mrs Bradshaw, which has rich red flowers, and the orange ‘Totally Tangerine.’ Look out for the beautiful cultivar ‘Lady Stratheden’ which has yellow blossoms on top of airy stems – elegant!
Lysimachia ‘Beaujolais’ is a lovely loosestrife with deep purple flowers. Again, these are long blooming plants but what I also love is the crinkly grey-green foliage. This will prefer a moist soil in sun or partial shade and it’s a great one for pollinating insects.
Finally, I loved the dainty creeping phlox called ‘Coral Eye’ with its charming white flowers and its hint of blush and deeper pink eye.
It would make a delightful ground cover for a tricky slope or rocky area.
I visited my local garden centre to see what was on offer and what was doing well. The place was awash with flowers and colour.