My top 7 all time favourite bedding plants, and a terrace overhaul. ππ±
Hello friends!
I promised an account of the terrace overhaul I did this week, along with my other gardening forays...here they are, along with a list of my favourite bedding plants (in no particular order) which you can pop into your containers this weekend and which will bring you colour and joy throughout the summer. I will be posting pictures of the terrace on Instagram... I can't seem to get them to upload on here!
My top 7 bedding plants.
Bedding plants are plants that you can buy at the garden centre which have been raised specifically to last for the season. You can use them like you might employ new cushions, or a throw in your drawing room, to change the mood and feel of your garden...nothing permanent, no commitments. I love them.
Bringing a fresh look to an established garden neednβt mean lots of sweat and a huge budget. Enough bedding plants, placed properly can completely revitalise your garden instantly, whether you put them in your flowerbeds, or in pots. The trick is to prepare your space well in advance, not only clearing the gaps of weeds, but also creating more space throughout the entire garden or border by moving other plants if needed. This will create a coherent look, ensuring that your new plants seem like they began life in your space, rather than just being plonked there. Just one rule friends (because we love a rule, don't we!) ... I would advise that you stick to one type of plant, or at the most, two, for that pulled-together, purposeful look. Oh, and buy about fifty percent more than you think you need.
Sorry about lack of pics here to illustrate - I am running against the clock and can't manage all the searching today!
Petunia - gorgeous trumpets of floral LOVE! The more blousy the better - don't hold back. Lovely in hanging baskets
Lobelia - Teeny tiny clouds of blue bliss. Use them to underplant anything you like, but they are also AWESOME as the main event
Nemesia - Another billowing cloudy thing - delicious pastel colours and wonderfully scented too. As always, plant in vast quantities, and these can be cut once they go over, and they will re-grow after a feed.
Diascia (see nemesia above) Love these
Argyranthemum - I'm a bit bonkers for these, and they're my choice for the pots on my terrace. They basically come in fabulous pink, or the classic white with marmalade centres. Once more, go mad with them. Be generous and plentiful. Lots is never enough.
Pelargonium - I love the scented variety, but the zone's have their own charm. This is one that's easy to propagate from too, so if you fall in love with them, you can have them year after year just from a few cuttings. I'll do a thing on pelargonium cuttings on the blog soon.
Antirrhinum - I love these - delicious bubblegum scent and great for cutting (if you can bear it)
Here are my five minute forays this week:
Monday
Today I'm doing an 'Instagram takeover' for Dobbies (a chain of garden centres in the UK), so I do rather more than I would perhaps normally on a Monday. The weather is beyond beautiful... I put out cushions and sweep the paths and terraces. I water all my containers and feed the containerised lilacs, which are now coming into flower, with tomato fertiliser, to give them some extra oomph. I then dash inside and make some paper pots for sowing squash (every single small plastic pot I own is filled with a baby). The paper pots are really easy to make and are particularly useful for when you want depth for plants like squash. I sow three 'Uchi Kuri' seeds into my pots, and run out of time.
Tuesday
It's chopping day (I like to chop something on a Tuesday..it's sort of become a thing). I mow the grass, this week with the grass collector attached to the mower, because what I really what to do is 'hoover' the lawn; there has been rather a lot of activity in the huge sycamore tree that towers over my garden...I think it must be the parakeets - they like a bit of a fight. Anyway, there's masses of sycamore flowers and leaves all over the lawn, so I mow it all up, and I also take some shears to the hornbeam 'hedge' I planted from bare-root whips last year, which is now filling out rather pleasingly, and has got to the point that it needs some shaping. When I say 'shaping' I literally take off four or five stems that are sticking out into the path, and chop the top off of a couple of the plants, which have reached the height I want the hedge to be. I'd rather like this hedge to end up wavy but I'm not sure it's possible with hornbeam. I'll probably pop over to pinterest to see if anyone else has done it before I take the plunge on that one!
Wednesday
I take the last cobaea, which has yet to be potted into a large, deep container, filled with lovely nutrient-rich compost, and give it the respect it deserves. At this point I have four cobaea scandens plants; two inside and two outside, and I'm hoping that, in combination, they'll provide the shade we so badly need in our glass extension over the summer. Architects are wonderful beasts, but the thing is that they don't have to LIVE in the place they design for you (YOU get to do that, you lucky thing!) so you see, the depth of thought that goes into a statement like "It'll be fine...the glass is tinted, and anyway, you're North-facing" is probably not as weighty as it should be. I'll say no more about that. I've ordered some clear stick-on hooks which I plan to use, with fishing line, to create an invisible support for the vine. It's an experiment and I'm excited to see where it goes.
Thursday
It's time to get serious about the terrace. There comes a point in May, when it's crunch-time, really, if one has any hope of achieving the look, or feel, or vibe of the garden one has in one's head. If you don't put the effort in, then things just hang around, unplanted and un-loved, for the rest of the summer (at least that's what happens to me)... So this is my window to get everything that should be in, IN, and to achieve (as far as possible) the 'finished look' that I'm going for. I tackle the terrace today. I empty the pots of their tulips, use the old compost to spread around the garden and replace it with new. I then plant up eighty gladiolus callianthus bulbs in three pots (these bulbs form the backbone of my terrace planting, and I'll be putting some more in at the end of May, to extend the season). I also prepare a second wide, shallow pot for more cut and come again salad, as per my salad plan, and I re-pot the two hearted lettuces I sowed weeks ago into pretty terracotta so they can heart up in peace AND beauty. I run out of time - the job is not even half done. More tomorrow.
Friday
The first rule of the five minute garden is to let go of any and all containers less that 40cm diameter. But due to the salad plan, this rule is going to have to be, ummm, broken! I have run out of pots for the argyranthemum I ordered and have been growing on for weeks. I yank out a few smaller pots which had been in retirement and fill them with the daisies, hoping I don't regret flouting my own rules. The reason for being so draconian in this respect is the sheer amount of time it takes to water and care for containers; larger ones hold water for longer and therefore need tending less. It's a no-brainer really, but at the same time, I don't have any budget for more large pots right now, so this is the only solution.
I try to peel the paper off the plants but the roots have grown right through, so I just remove the bottom, thick bit of newspaper and I leave the rest alone so as not to disturb too many roots. I also plant three parsley seedlings that I raised a few weeks back. Getting all the seedlings and small plants to their eventual destinations is, like I said, a bit of a push. The children are all playing in the rain, getting as wet as they can. For some reason children like to go out into the garden with their socks on. My house is constantly full of wet socks. So odd. Anyway, I grab a trowel and quickly put some salvia which had been hanging about in a cold frame, into my front garden flowerbed. The terrace is basically complete, and next week I'll be tackling the flowerbeds!
I feel like this week's letter is rather dry - sorry about that...lots of information to get in and I don't want you guys to be put off by length! My eldest turns TEN tomorrow and my mind is rather elsewhere - a whole decade since I became this OTHER person.... a person on whom other people depend... a person completely alien to the one I used to be. Ten years of the force of nature that is HER. She baffles and confounds me, and she sends me into a spin. I am totally befuddled by how to bring up small people. I am still learning and I get it wrong most of the time, but I've never been more sure that this whole thing needs approaching with a twinkly eye and a healthy sense of humour, otherwise we become the kind of parents we swore we wouldn't be when we were kids. The challenges are punchy, and I'm convinced (I have to be) that it's all, somehow, meant to be!
Love you all for reading this far! Come at me with the replies if you have any questions, or you can dm me on the insta or the twitter if you need.
All the good things, always
xx Laetitia
ps you might have missed:
Ten tips for virgin gardeners, part 1
Ten tips for virgin gardeners, part 2