Rose garden5/17/2023 ![]() They need a sunny spot with well-drained, fertile soil. ![]() They are easy to grow, either from seed – sow in May for flowers the following spring – or order as bare-root plug plants and plant out in the autumn. They will continue to look good for many months.Īlthough technically grown as biennials and planted out as spring bedding, wallflowers are short-lived perennials with a very long flowering season. When these begin to fade and die back, the wallflowers will hide the spent stems allowing them to disappear gracefully from your borders. ![]() The flowers begin to appear in late March, so plant wallflowers for spring bulbs to grow through. With contrasting flower styles, size and foliage, wallflowers are scented too and make great companion plants that will carry borders and containers through the changing seasons. As those first shoots emerge, wallflowers ( Erysimum) will set the stage perfectly for the incoming tulips and daffodils. Plant them among other woodland dwellers such as ferns and evergreen grasses such as carex and luzula.Īlthough we're used to thinking ahead to our spring bulb displays, it's just as important to plan what they will grow with. Hardy cyclamen are perennials, and will come up every year, multiplying in the right conditions, so you will end up with a colourful spread of blooms through your garden borders. Plant the tiny, doughnut-shaped corms in September, not too deep, into good, open soil, adding a winter mulch for protection. The intensely coloured flowers will keep coming steadfastly right through until March. These tiny, elegant, jewel-like flowers are offset by gorgeous, silver-mottled leaves.Ī good choice for shadier corners, plant hardy cyclamen at the front of your borders or at the foot of smaller trees where they can be admired. Guaranteed to bring cheer, they range in colour from purest white through to pink to rich red. But before the full palette of new season blues and yellows explodes, there is nothing like the dainty blooms of hardy cyclamen to brighten up your winter borders. They are perfect for achieving a natural, woodland look if you have space, but they look equally good planted in containers.Īs the earliest spring bloomers emerge, look at your feet for carpets of snowdrops, winter aconite, crocus, chionodoxa and iris reticulata. Hellebores are a great choice for shady borders and look good planted in small groups or drifts through other low-growing shrubs, grasses and early-flowering bulbs. Hybrid hellebores, mostly from crosses between helleborus niger, the Christmas rose, and orientalis, the Lenten rose, offer flowers ranging from simple singles to more frilly, voluptuous doubles, with variations in colours from sparkling white through to speckled, dusky pinks, to glamorous almost-black shades of purple. In the garden, hellebores have the added bonus of semi-evergreen leaves, which emerge fresh and shiny in spring to make good structural foliage through the summer months. At this barren time of year, they are perfectly placed to be admired in all their delicate detail, both in the garden and cut for indoors where the flowers are best displayed floating face up in a water bowl. These are true winter showstoppers, with many hybrids and varieties to choose from that will flower from December until March. January border plant: HelleboresĪs the new year beds in, hellebore season is in full swing. By using the same plant in lots of different parts of your garden, this ticks another key design box by repeating shapes and colour for a unified look. Look for plants that will reward you year after year and that are easy to divide or take cuttings from, then you can add to your stock. Think about textures and colour schemes, height and shape, to create a visual rhythm through your planting scheme. They don't have to be the big showstoppers – it's important to think about companion plants that work well with other border favourites. Treat yourself to one plant that's at its peak every month and you'll be guaranteed a succession of gorgeous plants to mark each month through the changing seasons. It's certainly a good design goal to aspire to – and one that helps justify a monthly trip to the garden centre or your favourite online nursery to see what's in season. And a wise gardener once said that if you have at least one plant in bloom for every month of the year, you're part of the way to achieving that horticultural nirvana. Succession planting is the holy grail of gardening – creating a display of border plants that looks good for 12 months of the year. Succession in gardening is about as far removed from the blockbuster TV series as you can get, but it does involve dirt and glamour.
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