Perennials in the Garden

A bumper selection of perennial plugs

If you read this column regularly you will have noticed that I’m not really one for filling the beds and borders with flowering perennials. Until now.  

Last week I was checking my phone notices and someone mentioned a special offer from a supplier of 72 perennial plant plugs in a tray for under €2 reduced from €72. As the message came through at four in the morning I was half asleep and just ordered it through Paypal and thought no more about it as I drifted back to sleep.

In the cold light of day it dawned on me what I had done. It’s one thing buying 72 baby perennials, but they will need growing on, replanting, finding somewhere to put the plants in between my vegetables and rusty incinerator bins and rusty car parts – and then there’s protecting the plants from slugs and snails. I do have a bed that is totally over run by perennial geraniums which I could dig up to make some room… more work!

I have made a lot of work for myself and have resorted to turning my phone off at night in case any more offers come through that I can’t resist when half asleep.

Looking on the positive side, the plants will give some much needed colour to my mainly green garden interspersed with some annual colour.  My seed order came this week and I have sown the petunias, pansies and lobelia so this year should be a riot of colour. I wonder if I can eat any of the perennials?

Bumper Collection

The Thompson and Morgan bumper collection I bought has plants that are ideal for patio, cottage gardens, wildlife gardens, and cut flower gardens according to the blurb. They also offer a broad range of colours, heights, textures and scents to delight my senses. 

Here are the varieties being delivered. I will confess that I have had to use Google images for some of these because I have never heard of them before.

The collection includes:

Aquilegia 'Mrs Scott Elliot' - The striking flowers come in a range of pretty colours and are perfect suited to cottage gardens borders and woodland planting schemes.

Verbascum 'Southern Charm' - Gorgeous pastel shades. Long spikes bear 1in flowers in apricot, dusky pink, cream and lavender-pink over a long period.

Lavender 'Hidcote' - With its compact habit and dark purple flower spikes, this must be one of the most widely popular  lavender.

Gaura 'Sparkle White' - Graceful, slender stems are topped with a flurry of dazzling white, starry blooms that still look fresh and airy at the end of summer.

Verbena 'Buenos Aires' - The long lasting blooms of the stunning variety great for attracting bees.

Doronicum 'Little Leo' - Heart shaped foliage makes an attractive backdrop to the abundant golden-yellow flowers of this hardy perennial daisy.

Delphinium 'Magic Fountains Mixed' - Spires of white, lilac and blue delphinium flowers in a blend of no less than seven shades. This compact dwarf variety doesn’t need for staking which pleases me.

Eryngium 'Blue Hobbit' - Eryngium are handy little plants for the border, as they'll grow in many different types of soil.

Foxglove 'Sugar Plum' - A reworking of a cottage garden classic. Foxglove 'Sugar Plum' is an improved form of old-time favourite 'Pam's Choice'. Apparently these are really poisonous so I won’t be trying to eat them.

Achillea 'Cassis' - Broad plates of tiny cherry red blooms are held on tall wavering stems.

Dianthus 'Arctic Fire' - Long lasting, white jagged-edged petals with a fiery red eye smother this dwarf hardy perennial throughout summer.

Echinacea 'Primadonna Mixed' - Echinacea blooms are ideal for cutting and adding to floral displays in the home. They are used in herbal medicine too.

They all promise to be easy to look after and only need a bit of annual upkeep. I’ll be getting six of each variety as well so I can play around with their seating areas in the garden and at least one of each will find their perfect spot.

I’m actually enjoying reading about the plants I ordered and must confess to being just a little bit excited about receiving them through the post. They are promised to arrive at the end of the month so I have a week or two to create places for them to go and make them feel welcome. I’m a perennial convert

It's all go in the garden this week... And a great time to be searching through skips

 A happy man finding a bit of old rusty tat in a skip

This week’s exploits in the garden all started when I bought a twenty pack of pansies.

It was an impulse buy; I’ll admit it as I was just in the shop for a look around.  The impulse buy started a shopping frenzy. If I had some plants to pot up then I would need some potting compost, so away I went to the compost isle to get a couple of bags.  When I got home it dawned on me that there was so much to sort out before I planted the first pansy into a pot so I continued my shopping online and ordered a huge pile of 20 cell plug trays and a suitcase full of vegetable and flower seeds to fill them.  

For Tomorrow

I think the amount of initial work needed to kick start the season must be the main reason why so many of us don’t start the spring garden until quite late. Time is an important factor of course but it’s the thought of all of the preparation work that needs doing, it can all get a bit overwhelming. 

For that reason I tend to use the philosophy of just doing 10/20 minutes a day in the garden and keep picking away at the jobs until you feel you are making progress. I also use the wise words of Julie’s dads, which is “Leave something for tomorrow” I particularly like that idea as it takes the pressure off finishing a job in one go. 

With that in mind I thought I’d give you a blow by blow account of the jobs I have done over the past few days and I must say it’s been a real pleasure and I have an impulse  pack of pansies to thank for that.

A Week in the Garden

The compost I bought is very fibrous but needs sieving to make it suitable for seed sowing. It says on the bag that it’s ideal for germinating seeds but it looks like that was stuck on as a seasonal afterthought because it’s not in the list of instructions on the back. There is a quantity of “John Innes” compost added to the bag but have decided to embellish things a bit with some of my own  (also sieved) garden soil and material from the compost bin. It’ll get most of the seeds growing that don’t like being planted straight outside, which is my favoured method of planting I must admit as nature does most of the work.  

The seeds I ordered were the usual non root veg that we tend to go for. Salad varieties such as spring onions, lettuce (no tomatoes this year) coriander, rocket and chives. Then we have gone for the usual, broccoli, kale, beans and mange tout (no peas this year) it’s not a huge amount of variety but it’ll fill the garden up nicely. 

I have the seed trays filled up ready and needed to clear the tunnel and cloche inside the tunnel to accommodate them (which took 2 days)

To re-home the pansies we needed to empty the old pots from last year. Unlike the last three years everything in the containers has died. There are usually a few old geraniums survive but it’s been a colder winter this year. The old compost is now in the garden and the fresh supply is being added. There’s no point keeping any of the old material in the pots because they are an ideal breeding ground for root eating grubs such as vine weevil. I’ve also added a few hands full of shredded hemp stalks I have in abundance into the mix, I think these will absorb water and act like moisture retention gel for the pots. It’s a bit of an experiment but I think it’ll work and not starve the plants of nitrogen.

We’ve also been getting one bed ready for the broccoli. Last year it was taken over by nasturtiums, (my most prevalent weed in the garden) so this time we’re covering the whole area with the landscape fabric so they can’t get a foothold. I’ve also been collecting woodchip from an area in the park where they topped some trees last year. I thought it would be well rotted by now but it still needs putting through the compost bin to rot down a bit more before I use it.

So all in all it’s been a busy week in the garden. Making a start is the main thing for me. 

All work aside, the highlight of my week though was seeing an old dustbin garden incinerator, complete with chimney lid in a skip in a neighbours driveway. It’s old and rusty with most of the galvanized cover burn off – very aesthetic I think. I couldn’t resist it though and it’s now pride of place in my veggie patch. 

Transplanting Seedlings and Eco Strimmers

 Chamomile roots running out of space in the plug cell

I’ve been delving into all things electric this week. At the moment the only items I have running from lithium-ion batteries are my cordless drill and vacuum cleaner.  Things will change though as the time has come to see about replacing my tired petrol driven strimmer/brushcutter and I’m thinking all electric might be the way to go. 

Over the last few months my lad has been doing a lot of research into electric/solar power eco vehicles and renewable energy and it won’t be long before it becomes a social stigma to use fossil fuels, just like smoking is now.  

At one time I had a notion to build my own passive energy eco house in the country and live off the grid. As I’m a bit of a townie now and enjoy the convenience of walking to the shops and amenities, I’d prefer to fit out my current abode when I can afford it to be an eco-house and contribute to the grid to offset some of the installation costs. With the latest technology coming down in price, converting an older house to renewable energy seems to make more sense to me and would be easier and far more cost effective than starting from scratch.

The idea we are aiming for is to produce the power via solar panels, store it in batteries and use it to power the house, garden equipment and hopefully my electric guzzling pottery kiln which runs at about 9kw. An electric car is a few years off for me as I’ll wait until the price goes right down for an older one but there will come a day when I’m plugging it in to charge up with stored solar energy.

   

Eco Strimmer

Small electric strimmers and lawnmowers have been popular for a while with casual gardeners but many professionals still prefer the petrol powered machines.  Electric industrial types were limited to the amount of power they could store and usage times before recharging, but not anymore. 

The new designs of heavy duty industrial machines can cut for at least an hour on one battery and as the batteries take less than one hour to charge you can swap them when one is empty. By the time the second one runs out the first one will be full again. You’d still have time for a quick cuppa in between battery changes which will keep the health and safety people happy.  The noise levels on the electric machines is far less than combustion engines too so you shouldn’t need ear protectors and could even talk as you were working without having to shout.

If you don’t have easy access to plug sockets when you are working out on site, there is a pre-charged back up storage box that could fit into your vehicle that can recharge the batteries for up to seven hours’ worth of work.  

I’m not sure if I’m in the big league enough to warrant such machinery, I think I’m more interested in the technology side of things that actually buying one.  They don’t come cheap, with the strimmers costing in excess of €800 and mowers considerably more, I’ll probably just keep thrashing away with the noisy, petrol, black smoke emitting one I have until it packs in or until I start getting disproving stares from neighbours for using fossil fuels.

On the topic of ‘plugging’ things in, I was going to chat about transplanting plug plants into larger pots this week but my ramblings about solar energy has taken up most of the room on the page so here’s a condensed ‘How To’

Transplanting smaller plug plants into larger pots

As the new seedlings grow in plugs it’s important to minimise the shocks that a plant usually goes through when the roots are disturbed. 

Transplanting at the right time is paramount as your plants will keep growing and thriving. If the roots curl up around the base of the container they are what are known as ‘root bound’ or ‘pot bound’

The bigger the root system, the more your plant will thrive.

When the roots start circling and going around the container nutrient absorption becomes increasingly more difficult because the circling roots squeeze and compress the root ball. Eventually, the roots can no longer develop properly.

When the roots don’t have enough space to grow, the root system begins to be underdeveloped compared to the size of the plant. As a consequence, plant growth grinds to a halt, the middle leaves may start turning yellow or dying. The stems become harder, brittle and can sometimes turn purple. The roots can also turn brown and die. For this reason it’s important to keep an eye on the plants as they develop, even after they have been moved to 7cm pots too as it most plants can fill that space up in a couple of weeks.

Bedding Plants and Displays

 A rainbow of summer bedding

Bedding plants 

At this early growing time of the year it’s great to plant the summer bedding. We can grow plants all year for a touch of colour of course, we have pulmonaria, cyclamen, polyanthus, primulas and a whole host of bulbs to choose from. Moving into winter we get wallflowers, primulas and violas.  But the largest selection of border and bedding plants are available at this time of year for summer colour. And the choice can be a little bit overwhelming – in a good way.  

I’m reminded of the time I was at horticultural college. In early spring all the students were given the task of designing a floral summer display for the huge kidney shaped flower bed outside the main entrance that greeted visitors.  The bed was about 30 metres long and ten metres wide and was there to give us practice for designing beds for public parks and gardens. Our task was to decide which plants to use, taking colour, height, flowering time, maintenance and soil needs into consideration. We then had to do mathematical calculations to decide how many of each type of plants we needed then draw out the design plan.  From there we were expected to grow our chosen plants from seeds to maturity under protection ready to plant out. There were twenty of us in the group but only one would get the accolade of having their plan come to reality. Which wasn’t me.   Although I was a bit disappointed that my self-portrait made from cineraria, begonias, petunias and busy lizzies wasn’t  chosen, in hindsight I was pleased that I could take a back seat. 

The design that was chosen came from a lad who eventually ended up working for the college as the parks gardener so they must have liked his design and work ethic. He chose contrasting reds, purples, whites and formed them in a very clever way to keep the kidney shape flowing.  The central focal points were tall tropicanna (black canna) plants which glowed purple  in the sun with vivid red flowers, all of them grown from seed throughout spring, potted on from plugs into 7cm pots and eventually planted out in one day into freshly prepared and loosened soil by the rest of the group.

Today I work on a smaller scale. I don’t tend to grow my own bedding as I only have a few planters to pot up so tend to buy summer bedding when they are reduced to sell in the garden centres.  Buying this way limits the choice somewhat but as I generally just go for petunias and geramiums I generally don’t feel hard done by.

Designing with bedding plants

Some of the larger community bedding areas can be planted up two or three times a year to keep the colour interest. This is called successive planting.

Successional planting:  Generally replanting in late spring (for summer) and early autumn (for winter/spring). However, the highest-maintenance displays require late spring, mid- to late summer and autumn plantings. This this can be done easily in small gardens too.

For replanting twice a year: try the summer combination of begonia, the flowering seedheads of ornamental grassesand late-flowering salvia and verbena. For winter, plant perennials such as bergenia, cyclamen, hellebores and viola to give interesting foliage as well as flower colour during mild spells.

If you are replanting three times a year: plant with tulips and polyanthus for spring; replacing them with nemesia and alyssum for early summer, then cannas and dahlia for late-summer colour. This generally requires well-developed (larger) plants as they have less time to grow and develop in the ground; but can give a fuller display.

Formal bedding: Like the type we were doing at college is used for bold displays in public gardens and sometimes used in smaller ornamental gardens. Formal beds usually consist of neat, symmetrical patterns. Formal planting used for entire beds, in closely planted blocks of colour (often in association with orderly edging plants such as lobelia or even clipped box). 

Informal bedding: Bedding plants can be used less formally in the garden, perhaps to brighten up the front of a border or fill bare soil under roses. Straight lines and symmetrical patterns are not compulsory here – it’s more a case of having fun with colour and textures. Cottage garden plants would look well here.

Carpet bedding: Carpet bedding is the most intensive form of bedding and uses plants that are so compact and tightly knitted that the appearance is akin to a woven carpet. Designs are often technically complex and can include highly intricate displays such as floral clocks, lettering or coats-of-arms. For the home gardener, designs can be much less elaborate and on a smaller scale. I’d plant it out first though for the best results.