Gardening Page

Call me old fashioned, by I like to see a few bedding plants in a garden.  When we built our patio at home we constructed a couple of raised brick beds to give it a more intimate feel and it is these beds we plant up twice a year with bedding. On my day off I removed the remains of the Geraniums which I had grown myself from seed. I had sown several varieties in many shades of pink and red and these had performed well in a difficult year. Their replacements were F1 Pansies in Rose and Yellow, bought from the local garden centre; somehow I never seem to be organised enough to sow my own. Protected by a shielding edge of brick they should flower well throughout the winter and be at their best in the spring, when I will replace them with more bedding plants for the summer season.

Over the years we have tried many plants in these beds. Favourites included Impatiens (Busy Lizzie), Non-stop Begonias, Afro-French Marigolds and Dianthus, all of which performed over a long period with little effort from us. I mention this because I have just sent off my order for this year’s flower and vegetable seeds to Thompson and Morgan, of which more in a future article.

I am always delighted to get something for nothing and many bedding plants sow themselves around our garden, the result of five years of growing them and allowing them to produce seed. A classic case is Calendula, or Pot Marigold, which comes up every year amongst the heathers, where I planted it several years ago when the heathers themselves were quite small. Flowering throughout the summer when their host plant is just green foliage, I remove them later to enjoy the pink heather flowers in thefront garden over the winter. Also adorning the front garden with free summer colour is the rather trendy Verbena bonariensis, tall stems of which poke up from any patch where I care to leave them and wave their lilac-purple flowers in the breeze.  I planted the originals amongst American grasses but they have gradually wandered off and appear where they please.

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