Bedding Plants for your Garden

Half Hardy Annuals are flowers which are not frost hardy and which grow, flower and die in one year. They are at their best at the moment and are sold as ‘bedding plants’ in all garden centres.

Many of the gardeners who own the garden centres will tell you that although they make a healthy contribution to their profits, they do not really love them. Their true love is the perennials (plants which flower year after year); herbacious plamnts (plants which flower , then die back to the ground for the winter, then grow the next spring) and shrubs. I beg to differ. I love them.

Whilst I admit, they are a lot of work to raise them when they are only going to last a couple of months, they are so bright and cheerful – gaudy even. Not only do they give bright colour and shape for the summer months, because you ddo not have to work around them, they make weeding and digging your flower bed much easier. The down side is that it leaves the beds empty for the winter months.

If you are going to raise half hardy plants yourself, you do need to give them shelter in the early months. You can do this in a cold greenhouse or even on your kitchen windowsill, if you are not growing to many.  Most packets of sed have far more seeds thabn you need, so why not get together with your friends and neighbours and each raise one sortr of plant, then share them out when they are ready to plant. That way you get a variety of pplants whilst not taking up to much rom, costing a fortune in seeds and throwing away loads of unwanted plants.

If you do not have the room, or time to grow half hardy annuals, then the alternative is to grow hardy annuals. These are flowers which you can sow outside because they will survive the frosts. The flower and then die in the same year. Both half hardy annuals (HHA) and hardy annuals (HA) are inexpensive to grow and will give you a good display all through summer.

Even if you do not want the formality of having your plants in lines, when sowing hardy annuals outside, you should sow them in lines. They do not have to be straight lins, but you need to be able to readily recognize where you have sown them when they are young so that you can pull out any weeds which grow amongst them.

The seed packet will tell you how deep you need to sow your seeds but the usual technique is to dig over your plot, rake the top to a fine ’tilth’ that is so that the top is smooth and crumbly. Then draw your lines to depth you want them, scatter the seed thinly in them and cover them up. Keep them watered. In three weeks you should have tiny plants emerging. When they are large enough to handle, thin them out by pulling up those you do not want. You should not grow flowers too close to each other. They will not develop to their full potential. However well you have dug and weeded your flower bed, you will still get the odd weed coming up. Pull them out early. That way they will not put on good root systems and compete with your flowers for space and nutrients.

If you only have a small garden, or you only want a few annuals because most of your garden is filled with permanent planting, then the answer may well be to go out and buy bedding plants. Remember, though that most bedding plants are half hardy annuals and they are not frost hardy, so although they are sold early in garden centres, you should not put them out in your garden until all the frosts and finished.