Look months ahead: gardeners and investors benefit from this sound guiding principle. So do bedders-out. In two months’ time we will be fussing about summer bedding plants. Prices will be up and offerings more restricted. By sending off now for seeds and sowing them appropriately, you will widen your choices, cut your costs and have fun. Here is what I am planning, all to be sown in a heated room or frame or greenhouse. None survives frost outdoors. They need to be thinned and transplanted into pots or boxes and put out only when frosts are finished for the year.
I wrote here in February about plug plants, those rooted little plants for potting on. They are the easiest way to stock up on pelargoniums, what amateurs call geraniums, and are vastly easier than raising plants yourself from seed. I also use plugs for basic petunias, but this year there is an exception.
Thompson & Morgan’s breeders have come up with a truly unusual petunia, one that climbs to a height of about 4ft. Petunia Purple Tower carries showers of lavender-purple flowers and grows upwards when tied to a cane, adding height to pots on a terrace. I never expected to see a climbing petunia, but I never expected a rapidly climbing fuchsia, either, until the same source revived a forgotten oldie, Fuchsia Lady Boothby. It reached 6ft in one year on my west-facing wall, though the stems look ominously brown now after winter frost. Perhaps it will shoot again from the base.
I will not be buying plug plants of my yearly mainstays: marigolds, sweet peas, cosmos daisies and zinnias. The best varieties are not readily available in that form and they are cheaper if grown directly from seed. Ever more varieties are on sale this year, as you can verify in the UK from Thompson & Morgan; Johnsons near Newmarket; Mr Fothergill’s, also near Newmarket; and Sarah Raven, whose acute eye, especially for cut flowers, selects varieties she finds particularly pretty, as do I.
Zinnias need to be tall varieties with big double flowers, not low growing ones from Maryland with little open flowers instead. Those to choose are the giant double mixed varieties, not floriferous little Zahara which is no good as a cut flower. Watch out for slugs and snails, which will strip a young zinnia even though the leaves are rough.
As for sweet peas, ever more tempting varieties come yearly to the market. As most of them have an excellent scent, antique or heritage varieties no longer have the edge. My top choice remains King Size Navy Blue for scent, length of season and depth of colour, but the new Supreme White looks an ideal match for it, as does Tara, a finely scented rose-pink with frilly edges to its petals. Thompson & Morgan also has a new Scentsation mix whose colours range from blue through white to red, with petals that last better than most in hot weather. The stems are long and the scent is particularly powerful, making it an excellent choice if you want bunches of cut flowers.
As for cosmos daisies and marigolds, they are my yearly staples, especially in a changing climate. They enjoy a far-flung popularity, not least in gardens in India and Pakistan where they were made fashionable by the British in the days of empire. They survive extreme heat, an increasingly valuable attribute, but many of them will also perform well in a wet summer. They vary, however, in their relations with snails and slugs. The thin feathery leaves of cosmos daisies are unappealing to them: I never protect the plants when I bed them out in late May. To my surprise the pungent leaves of French marigolds are a delicacy for slimers and chewers: slugs and snails will strip young plants in a single night. Be warned and protect them properly.
Cosmos daisies come in ever more styles and colours, pale yellow Xanthos, streaky Sweet Sixteen, mixed Sensation with flowers from ruby red to violet-mauve, or semi-double ones with rounded flowers that are billed as “cupcake” varieties. I have tried them all but none is as good as tall white Purity, the best of the whites, and tall velvety rose-purple Rubenza, up to 5ft high by autumn. These two make tall plants, especially if potted on individually into pots up to a litre in size before being planted outdoors in late May. Height is always helpful in a bedding plant, especially in gaps in a big border. At a lower height the one I prefer is Cosmos sulphureus Brightness, whose semi-double flowers are a mixture of lemons, oranges, reds and so forth to a height of only 2ft.
After being spread by British families overseas, marigolds then suffered from the pale and pastel preference that took over gardeners back home. Look on them with fresh eyes and you will realise why, in the subcontinent, they are cut to make colourful garlands and strewn as ornaments in holy places. At home I have had excellent value from a low growing hybrid, Konstance, which is a cross between a French and an African marigold and is well able to flourish in hot or wet summers. It grows about a foot high and smothers itself in little flowers of red-orange. Last year I tried Colossus too, a selection with bigger double flowers in red and gold. The flowers are as big as golf balls, say their seedsmen, rightly. Colossus is an excellent choice, easily grown and reliable in all weathers.
I will be trying Solana this year as the flowers have unusual crested centres backed by mahogany red outer petals: it looks quite unlike a conventional little marigold. I will also try some classic lemon-yellow and orange double marigolds, which hypersensitive gardeners used to blacklist for being ever so vulgar. After seeing them in fine form in pyramids of pots in Pakistan, I look on them differently.
I love nasturtiums, so easy to grow, so prolific and in many varieties such vigorous trailers over wide areas of ground, as the painterly eye of Monet realised under the arches in his garden at Giverny. This year I will be trying a newish break in colour, Chameleon, whose flowers are compared rather fancifully to orchids. They change colours as they age, whence their name, but their usual shading is pale yellow with dark streaks and blotches. The plants do not spread widely, so they would look good in window boxes. I will break the rules of propriety and also try some Chameleons in raised beds of rare alpines where colour is scarce in late summer.
Seedsmen are alerting us to a further attraction in these summer staples. The leaves of nasturtiums are well known for their peppery taste if included in salads, but we are now told that the petals of marigold Konstance are tasty in salads or even sandwiches, as are the flowers of cosmos daisies. I will be eating them in July, as flowers in salads are still underused. We may have more in common with slugs than we realise.
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