Essential gardening tips and tricks - Storecupboard basics 3
This week: demystifying annuals and perennials, new bulb collections, a book giveaway, hot yellows in the garden, and a garden design trick
What’s in store this week:
In this week’s HOW TO GARDEN section we’ll be taking a look at some more Storecupboard basics: if you’re a beginner gardener and you’re wondering about the difference between annuals, biennials and perennials, it’s all explained here for you.
I’ve designed four brand new tulip collections for you, all of which were still available at the time of publication.
Before the Small Garden Design course starts again, I’m revisiting a design trick which will help bring attention to areas of your garden
Plant list of the week: Hot yellow is the colour of September - I’ve broken down a planting design so that you can see how you might actually be able to use this colour in the garden. Will I convert the hot yellow doubters….?
There’s another book giveaway of another of my all-time absolute favourite, indispensable garden bibles. If you’re a paid subscriber, just let me know in the comments below if you’d like to have a chance of receiving this book.
Some quick reminders:
You asked so we’re doing it again: I’ll be running the Small Garden Design Course again this autumn for paid subscribers. Whether you’re new here or whether you’d like to have another go at designing your plot, or corner of you’re plot, or whether you’re simply interested in dipping in and out, look out for updates from next month.
Come and join in the weekly ‘Show Us Your Plots’ where we all share photos of green spaces wherever we may be - on Sunday morning you’ll see a post on the Chat which starts ‘It’s Sunday 8th September and it’s time to Show Us Your Plots!’
And some very exciting news: my second book is finished! I’ll be revealing more about this very soon - paid subscribers will be getting a preview. I cannot begin to tell you just how excited I am about this one……
If a plant bores you, something must be done about it. The simplest course, if it belongs to you, is to throw it out. If it is someone else's, look the other way. If it belongs to someone you rather dislike anyway, don't be ashamed to let it confirm you in an inclusive repulsion
In the How to Garden series, we’ve talked about the fundamental things we should think about when we’re out there making friends with our space including soil, aspect, and how to make your own compost. We’ve looked at topics such as how to buy the best plants at a garden centre, and what is an annual.
Here’s how we kicked off:
This whole series aims to demystify the world of gardens and gardening, and sometimes the simplest of words can be really alienating:
Do you find yourself totally befuddled by the terms ‘annual’, ‘perennial’ and ‘biennial’?
Do you see all these terms - annual, biennial, perennial, and to top it all ‘annual that behaves like a perennial’ - and your brain just pops? They’re terms that are thrown into gardening articles all the time, yet if you don’t understand them, it can make you want to run away from the whole thing. But once you do know the words, you can bring them together to make a garden of your own.
Let’s start at the very beginning
Think Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music:
Let’s start with the 🎶 DO… 🎶 of plants: Annuals
Annuals come and go in a year. You sow them, they grow, they flower once, and then if you’re lucky, they scatter their seed themselves. This is called self-sowing or self-seeding. This all takes place within a year, and most of the time, once they’ve finished, they’ve finished. Gone.
Many annuals can be sown in early Spring. Those cornflowers and poppies for example, along with marigolds, annual mallows and sunflowers. They do everything in a year: the seed germinates, roots develop, stems and leaves grow. The bud opens into a flower which then produces seeds, and it dies. That’s it.
Although they only live for a year, annuals can be made to flower for a long time. A plants main function in life is to reproduce. It WANTS to make those seeds. That’s its whole reason for being. So if you deadhead (snip off) the dying flowers before they start turning into seed, what does the flower do? It doesn’t go ‘Ok fair dos, I' give up’. NO. The annual is a very persistent being, and if its one chance of reproducing has been taken away from it, it’ll just have another go, and produce more flower buds. Which give you more flowers. Perfect.
🎶 RE… 🎶: Biennials
Have you ever planted a foxglove and then wondered why it didn’t come back the next year? This is because it’s a biennial, a plant which needs two years to complete its life cycle. It produces leaves in the first year; in the second year, it flowers and dies.
In the first year, you see the leaves on the soil surface, which is very exciting, but then no flowers appear: that happens in the second year. The chances are that you’ll have bought that foxglove as a 2 year-old plant, and it’ll flower beautifully. But the next year, it isn’t there.
Common biennials include foxgloves and honesty: if you are planting these, plant them two years running - and their self seeding should take care of things from then on..
🎶 MI… 🎶: Perennials
Perennials are plants that grow for many years. Some may go on for decades, others may have just three or four years in them. Generally the top of the plant dies back each winter and regrows the following spring from the same root system one perennials can be evergreen.
Most perennials, taking a more measured approach to reproduction as they know they’ve got a few years in which to have a go, don't bloom quite as spectacularly as annuals. Hellebores, hardy geraniums (we’ll go into hardy and tender another time), nepeta, daylilies, peonies - these are all perennials.
Just to slightly muddy the waters, sometimes you might hear ‘this annual is perennial in my garden’. Panic not - it simply means that the climate suits the plant and it has decided to give it a few more years. For example, Scabiosa ‘Chat Noir’ is definitely an annual, but in my garden in one spot the same plant comes back year after year on the same root system. Don’t overthink this too much - if it happens, then great!
OK. Sing along with me: 🎶 Annuals, Biennials, Perennials 🎶
- how are you feeling about these distinctions now?
These above are all different from shrubs: plants whose structure remains all year round eg roses and hydrangeas. We’ll go into these another time, as we will with the adjectives tender and hardy. All you need to know for now is hardy plants will survive the cold, and tender plants won’t.
This week I’m giving away a gardening book which sits on my kitchen table, a book which is constantly checked and thumbed, a book which makes me smile every time I read it. Christopher Lloyd’s Garden Flowers is one of my bibles, with information written in a way that’ll make you smile.
Lloyd here distils all he has learnt in a lifetime study of the gardener’s main materials—perennial plants, including bulbs, corms, ferns and grasses. He describes everything he has learnt, thought, seen and tried, plant by plant, in alphabetical order. It’s a gem.
I know you’ll like it, so I’ve got my hands on a copy for a reader - when you’re commenting, mention if you’d like me to pop your name in the hat.
If you’re new to Christopher Lloyd, this quote is one I live by:
“If a plant bores you, something must be done about it. The simplest course, if it belongs to you, is to throw it out. If it is someone else's, look the other way. If it belongs to someone you rather dislike anyway, don't be ashamed to let it confirm you in an inclusive repulsion”.
My goodness, after this post about not ordering your tulips, I can’t actually believe the amount of tulips that have sold out. But I’m practising what I’m preaching and not panicking, and basing my selections on what’s available.
My advice is to keep things simple, with just three tulip varieties which will flower together early/late in the season. Plant each variety in a pot of its own, using fresh compost, and if you’re in the UK, don’t plant them till at least November. All of these steps will help you avoid the dreaded tulip fire.
Planting each variety in a separate pot or bucket enables you to move them around as the tulips flower and also as they change colour during the flowering. There’s one general theme going on so that if they all end up flowering at the same time, they’ll still work together:
Four tulip bulb recipes to order now
All of these recipes are available at the time of writing. The first two should flower in March/April, whilst the third and fourth will bloom later. But even if they decide not to obey the predicted timings, they’ll all still work together beautifully.
By the way, I’ve just spotted this on one supplier’s website and it makes me happy - I wish we could see this on every bulb supplier’s page:
1. Early colours of peonies and roses
Inspired by the idea of the voluptuousness of roses and peonies, this collection is a kind of a prelude to May, bringing together the colours of those romantic blooms which are yet to come:
From left to right we have:
A rose of a tulip, if ever there were such a thing. Deep rose-pink petals are marked petals with green on the outside and white on the inside.
The curving layered petals of this tulip reminds me of a peony. It starts off pale and then gradually becomes pinker and pinker.
Sometimes appearing deep red and sometimes a little more wine-coloured, you’ll just want to sink into the sumptuousness of this double tulip.