Plan a feast for the senses with bedding
With plenty of time at home, Graham has been planning his best summer display ever
With strict restrictions on social interaction still in place, we’re blessed to have a large garden and even larger allotment within walking distance and 2021 will be the year we really hang the flags out and plan our best-ever show. I can hardly wait. Gardening has certainly kept us (and I expect, many of you) fit in mind and body.
Winter treats
Getting the best from your plants is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You simply add the extra pieces (or planting partners) to complete your picture. Some of the best drifts of naturalised bulbs you’ll see can be found in churchyards right now, where snowdrops have never looked better than when teased open in the slanting sunlight with early crocus such as Crocus tommasinianus. For cottage garden charm in an old stone trough (or a reproduction one) try snowdrops with Cyclamen coum. All can be bought in black nursery pots now by post or from garden retailers and will seed down each year into a grass sward or large container.
Lenten roses (Helleborus hybridus) are also an eagerly anticipated treat for us, all the more so as we sow seed every year, as soon as they fall from the ripe pods, then wait a further three years to see what comes up. Some are very special indeed, whether in tall pots to reveal the nodding flowers, in seasonal borders or floating in a shallow bowl.
Setting the style
In my youth I bedded out the whole garden in summer ‘Parks Department’ style for eyepopping colour. Now it’s an altogether more subtle affair, with annuals and tender perennials used to give high spots in borders or grouped in clusters of containers with other hard-to-resist species such as Japanese maples, hostas and dwarf conifers (yes, really, especially pines!).
Succulents such as agave are also thrust into the limelight from early June alongside other narrow-leaved exotics with larger-than-life personalities such as pink and yellow variegated cordylines. Their jagged profiles rise above plants of softer outline and draw the eye.
Nothing will be sown this month. It’s just not worth the risk (or the heating bill for the greenhouse) when March-sown bedding plants will catch up in no time. Windowsillgrown plants are less likely to suffer from grey mould (botrytis) than in a damp greenhouse, but can soon get drawn and spindly. However, early February is marked on my calendar to remind me to order young plug plants by post of less easily grown bedders such as rudbeckias, begonias and petunias.
Too good to miss
I’m going to look back on 2020 as the year of the cut flower. Nothing gave us greater pleasure last year than bringing back armfuls of freshly cut blooms from the allotment and we’re keen to have a second helping. Think sunflowers, gladioli, dahlias, zinnias and asters and you’ll get the idea. The bees will thank you, too. There will also be a special spot for the truly ‘Amazing Grey’ annual poppy from Mr Fothergill’s and ‘Vanilla Scent’ nemesia. Both will stop you in your tracks!