Get Planting... the best bedding

Next spring may seem some way off, but if you want to enliven plantings of bulbs, then have a go at growing your own bedding. It’s cheaper than buying in, enabling you to produce more and better for less cost.

There are more varieties of wallflower and sweet William to choose from too, helpful if you have particular colour combinations in mind. Both are grown for single-season use, sweet William being naturally biennial, and while perennial, wallflowers are grown as a biennial, as they’re prone to picking up virus and can soon lose their vigour.

Alyssum saxatile and aubrieta are perennial and although can be discarded after use, they’ll endure, continuing to spread and provide pops of spring colour for a number of years. All of them are also valuable producers of nectar, helping nourish early pollinators, such as solitary bees, at a difficult time of year.

The varying growth habits of each also presents a variety of uses. Being mat-forming, aubrieta is good for edging borders, clothing rocks or draping wall edges. Alyssum saxatile, with its startling yellow flowers, is low growing, but more open so good for front of borders, baskets and pots or underplanting shorter bulbs. Wallflowers are excellent for combining with long-stemmed tulips, young plants being set out and planted with the bulbs in autumn. Latest to perform is sweet William in late May and June, helping provide a floral link from spring to summer, when the garden is starting to switch gear for the next seasonal explosion of colour.

Sown now, grown on and planted out as young plants in autumn in a sunny or lightly shaded position, in a moist, well-drained not too fertile soil will give better establishment and a stronger flowering performance in spring. And who doesn’t want that?