We gardeners are greedy: we want a garden that looks wonderful for as long as
possible, yet doesn’t require too much hard work. Unfortunately, there are
times of year when drabness descends and there’s little in flower.
While accepting that nature has its fallow times and that you can’t have
summer’s effusion all year, you can still maintain interest and movement
without slaving away 24/7. The key is to understand that all plants have
different life spans. Knowing what these are and, more importantly, how the
plants interact, will help you to put together a garden in which showy
plants take up the baton of performing from each other, like a relay race.
Colour burst: for sock-’em-in-the-eye colour, you can’t ignore massed
park-garden ranks of busy lizzies and other bedding plants, such as salvias
and petunias. Annuals are like rockets on bonfire night: a brilliant streak
of colour and then they are gone. They germinate, flower and produce the
next generation of seed, all within the same year, and have to shout loudly
to get noticed by pollinating insects — it’s a competitive world out there.
Look among the seed packets for a huge selection of these fast-movers. There
are two types: hardy and half-hardy annuals. Hardy annuals, such as
love-in-a-mist, are the tougher of the two and will cope with cold and
severe frost. Almost all are easy to grow and not fussy about soil. They are
perfect for beginner gardeners and children alike.
Half-hardy annuals need frost protection. Lots of common bedding plants, such
as French marigolds, busy lizzies and snapdragons, are half- hardies. You
will see trays of them for sale from March onwards but, unless you have a
heated greenhouse or cold frame, don’t be too quick to plant them out, as
harsh frosts are still likely well into May.
Annuals are great for bare, brand-new gardens as they provide an instant,
spectacular show while longer-lived plants get established. The downside is
that they need more maintenance to keep them looking good, especially
half-hardies. Regular weeding, watering, pest and disease control,
deadheading, feeding, and sometimes staking to stop them flopping over are
necessary. For this reason, most annuals are used in colourful
easy-to-care-for tubs and hanging baskets or in gaps in mixed borders, where
different plants can provide interest at other times.
Twice as nice: many cottage favourites, such as foxgloves, Canterbury
bells, wallflowers and sweet william, are biennials: these take two years to
complete their life cycle. In the first year, they produce leaves, followed
by flowers and seed in the second. In severe winters they look a tad
miserable, but will rocket away in spring, giving long-lasting displays
while the rest of the garden is just waking up. You won’t need to bother
collecting any seed, as most biennials self-seed all over the place, often
in inhospitable spots — once you sow forget-me-nots, for example, you will
have them for life.
Lifelong friends: perennial plants are the mainstay of most gardens, as
you don’t have to replace them on a yearly basis. In everyday parlance,
“perennial” has come to mean “herbaceous perennial” — a soft-stemmed plant,
the top growth of which dies down in autumn but bursts into life again in
spring. Strictly speaking, it’s not an accurate definition, as huge trees
are also perennials, as are a lot of shrubs and fragile customers, such as
canna, which originate from hotter climates.
So it is better to split perennials into three categories. The first group,
woody perennials, are evergreen, and deciduous trees, roses and shrubs —
from pretty big specimens, such as rhododendrons and laurels, to small sages
and rosemaries. With rigid, permanent stems and branches, their lifespan is
anything from a few years to a few centuries. Deciduous woody perennials
lose their leaves in autumn; evergreens, as the name suggests, retain them
all year round, only shedding a few every once in a while.
Herbaceous perennials, the second category, are plants that have soft stems
rather than woody ones. “Herbaceous” is a bit of a mouthful; most gardeners
and nurseries simply say “perennials” for convenience. Some are evergreen
and carpet the ground over winter but usually the top growth disappears,
with the roots alive under the soil.
If you have nothing but herbaceous plants in the garden, you’ll have little
display over winter because the plants die back and go dormant — though, as
Rachel de Thame advocates on page 58, you can leave some of the dead stalks
standing for a ghostly presence.
In a mixed border — one with a small ornamental tree, shrubs, climbers,
conifers as well as bulbs — perennials such as lupins and delphiniums sit
well and will give continuing colour. Don’t forget herbaceous grasses
either. Many look stunning, and their seedheads last all winter.
The main difference between tender perennials, the third category, and the
other two is that the tenders come from hotter countries than ours, and
can’t tolerate low temperatures or frost. Pelargoniums for example (most
gardeners still call them “geraniums”), hate cold weather and need to be
brought into a frost-free place to ensure they survive the winter. Most
house plants are tender perennials, and although they love an outdoor
holiday in summer, all must be brought inside before autumn proper.
Weeds: technically, a weed is simply a plant in the wrong place. Some
perennial weeds are thugs, however, and have a shocking resistance to
intervention. Gardeners dread bindweed, horsetail (identifiable by its green
bottlebrush foliage), couch grass and ground elder. With deep roots, they
will survive normal weeding: the tiniest piece of root left in the ground
will regrow and multiply rapidly.
If you want a garden at all, these overstaying guests need the big boot. You
can torch them repeatedly with a flame gun. Weedkillers containing
glyphosate also work, but make sure there are no children or animals around.
Remember that weedkiller not only nobbles weeds, but also any choice plants
nearby, so be careful when you apply it and do so carefully.
In early spring, annual weeds can smother a plot. Hairy bittercress, for
example, can look scarily like it is taking over the garden but it is not as
bad as it looks. Wait for a dry day and chop off the top growth with a sharp
hoe — it will wither away in the sun.
