Tag Archives: annuals

This week in the garden: Going to sow a meadow

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in cutting garden, garden design, my garden, wildlife gardening

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

meadow

This is my little meadow area at the top of the terraces. It doesn’t look very inspiring at the moment – there are some crocuses and hyacinths and a few old gold heritage daffodils on the way but I’ve only just begun to build up the bulbs quotient so a few years to go yet till it’s the sheet of spring colour I have in my head.

The sheet of summer colour it will become is very much a recent memory though: this is what it looked like last year:

meadow_2013

And from the other direction across to the lane…

meadow_2013b

I’m sowing the same mix – Pictorial Meadows short annual mix – and have tipped in a couple of packets of Ladybird poppies I got for free in magazines, just for fun.

Second year sowing isn’t quite as straightforward as the first year, when it was a matter of broadcast-sowing across a patch of virgin ground. Now I have bulbs to avoid, and a few weeds, and some self-seeders from last year’s meadow which I don’t want to disturb.

So I started by weeding out the dandelions, cleavers and creeping buttercup seedlings by hand. Then I divided the area up into four.

I weighed my seeds and divided that in four, too: you can also mix them with silver sand which means they’re a bit easier to handle and you can see where you’ve sown. I put each batch of seed into a teacup, then went out and dealt with just one quarter at a time.

My small-headed rake was perfect for raking in between other things, so very gingerly I raked up the topsoil to loosen it, then broadcast sowed as evenly as I could. Another light raking to mix them in with the top level of soil and you’re done.

Repeat for the other three quarters: the timing is also crucial. I’ve put off sowing this for a week now, as the weather has been so dry; yesterday, though, it rained, nicely damping the soil, and it’s forecast to rain again later today and tomorrow, then we’re in for a patch of showery but not too cold weather next week. Perfect for germinating seeds. Can’t wait to take the pics this summer: I still have passers by telling me how lovely my meadow was last year, and this year’s is going to be even better.

October flowers

17 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Well I seem to be late for everything this month. And so it is with the unmissable Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, which for some time now I have been using as a way of stepping back and looking, properly at the garden and where it is in the year (instead of just seeing the usual tick-list of jobs that became urgent last week).

I blame a certain lethargy brought on by the impending frosts. And the recent demise of Slide.com, which was my way of indulging in loads of photos without the guilt of having to inflict them on anyone unless they wanted to sit through them all.

So I’m afraid this month you’ll have to look at all my photos, one by one: either that, or log off right now and go do something more improving instead.

Since it’s undeniably autumn now – the swishing sound as I walk becoming less and less easy to ignore, or indeed wilfully deny – I’ll start not with flowers but with berries, filling my garden gradually from the yellow buttons of Sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’ to hips and cotoneaster berries and the little jewel-like Tomato ‘Hundreds and Thousands’ tumbling over the tubs on my patio.

I’m not too keen on the cotoneaster, as it self-seeds everywhere, but at this time of year you can’t help but like it.

There are always lots of wildlings in my garden – and several are having a second flush at the moment.

Some aren’t strictly wildings but sort of naturalised garden plants: the Anemone x japonica ‘Honorine Jobert’ is going mad in the front garden and will have to be sorted out at some point. Not now though.

The hardy fuchsia is another one in its prime right now: hard to think I’m going to have to get rid of it this year (too big, too old, too shady).

In fact the fuchsias generally are looking pretty good right now.

Also in this part of the garden are – or rather were – the scented-leaf pelargoniums; though I spent part of today digging them up and tucking them away in the greenhouse ahead of the Big Freeze.

It’s been a good year for the annuals: and a good thing too, as I’m still in my first season so stuck to seed-raised flowers to see me through while I waited to see what came up in my new garden.

The cosmos in particular have been fabulous: flowering madly since about the end of June and still going strong.

But there have been two annual stars which have really stolen the show. The first is my bronze fennel: a lovely foil for other plants while they have their summer spell in the spotlight, but now a fireworks display of golden yellow.

And equally tall and airy, the Nicotiana mutabilis are dancing through the border on their wiry stems of pink and white, charming, dainty and adorable.

So adorable have they been, in fact, that I’m going to follow some advice Chris Ireland-Jones gave me on my recent visit to Avon Bulbs and try to overwinter them in the greenhouse. He says if you can cut them back hard, pot them up and bring them in, they have a head start on the season next year. Twice this display will be quite, quite ravishing. Can’t wait.

A meadowy miracle

07 Saturday Aug 2010

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Apologies in advance: I am about to brag, crow, boast and generally be smug and immodest about a bit of my garden. In my defence, I don’t actually take any credit for this as it’s happened pretty much entirely without my input: as all the nicest things that happen in my garden seem to do.

A few months ago I posted, with much shame, a picture of the duff bit of my garden – also known as the ‘middle bit’, the ‘difficult area’, or in moments of particular gloom, the ‘dump’. Just to remind you, this is what it looked like for most of last year. Actually, if I’m honest, for several years before that, too.


Shortly after a weekend’s work in spring, it looked tidier, but frankly, still not what you might call inspiring.

Ah – but just look at it now.


It’s even better close up.


This has been going on since about the beginning of June, and it just keeps getting better. First we had these little vetchy sort of things, spangling the whole area with tiny pea-like flowers in fetching shades of mauve, purple and pink. Then just as I thought those were coming to an end, out popped the cornflowers, followed by poppies, marigolds, and oh, tons of things I can’t even identify.


I had heard some pretty good things about the annual seed mixes from Pictorial Meadows – but I had no idea it would be quite this good.


The amazing thing is that it took me all of half an hour to sow, and since then there’s been pretty much no maintenance, not even much weeding (I’ve tugged out half-a-dozen fat hen plants but they’re the only weeds that got a look-in). I did have to water it every day for a week or two as we hit that patch of dry weather in spring just after I’d sown it – but since they came up properly I haven’t been watering at all, and they’re still looking this good after nearly six weeks of no rain.

My problem area has now been promoted to Best Area of the Garden Bar None and I take all visitors to see it before I even give them a cup of tea. I’ve never had a bit of my garden I actually wanted to show off before.

My only regret is that I shall have to leave it behind when we move and so will miss the loveliness of the seedheads in winter. But never mind: the beauty of annuals is that it all happens all over again next year, and I now know that no matter where we end up, there will be a corner of our garden I shall sow with an annual meadow like this.

Rays of sunshine

26 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in greenhouse

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, ,

Feast your eyes on these. Don’t they just make you feel warm to the tips of your toes?

They’re the marigolds left over from a summer of tomato-growing in my greenhouse. I confess, contrary to anything they tell you to do in the textbooks, I didn’t bother pulling up my tomatoes at the end of the season and just left them in the greenhouse to wait until I got around to clearing them up. In the meantime, the marigolds have taken over, growing tall and lusty and generally flourishing until they’re filling the whole space with glowing, warm orange and amber.

The funny thing is, I haven’t done a thing to help them out. I haven’t watered them, fed them, dead-headed them or in any way paid them any attention since about August. And they love it: they’re flowering their little hearts out. What’s more, they’re ridiculously healthy – not a hint of mildew, just big, hefty, happy plants.

Next year I shall try to remember just how drought-tolerant marigolds are. And that sometimes, leaving things well alone is much the best way to garden.

Plant of the month – September

03 Wednesday Sep 2008

Posted by in plant of the month

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Nicandra physaloides
Shoo-fly plant

I have a hazy memory of sowing a few seeds of this several years ago – but I haven’t done since, yet it pops up in some corner of my garden every year.

These lovely sky-blue flowers remind me of auriculas in the way they have those perfect white circles in the centre. They couldn’t be more different in habit though – Nicandra is a big, beefy, fast-growing plant to about 4ft high with lush, almost tropical foliage. It’s supposed to repel flies – hence the common name – and some use it as a companion plant to get rid of cabbage whitefly and the like.

The charms of these pretty blooms are fleeting – they last just a few days, and even then they won’t open if it’s not sunny. But the spectacular seedpods are worth all that coquettish reticence: they’re delicate papery lanterns some two inches across that start vivid green and turn nut-brown with age. They last for ages (if the kids don’t pop them all first) and shed their seeds generously: weed out all but one in only the places you really want them, or there won’t be room for anything else.