Get adventurous with annuals
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Mentioning bedding annuals and biennials tends to polarise gardeners. But love them or loathe them they are definitely among the most brightly coloured plants. Gardeners who deride bedding plants often damn them by association. If your immediate thoughts when confronted with annuals are of massed marigolds or the borough’s name spelt out in flowers, then it’s no surprise that you think them crude or vulgar.
It’s not that the individual plants — marigolds, ageratums, bedding begonias and the like — are not beautiful that lowers them in the estimation of those who feel they have a more refined garden appreciation. Rather it’s their often-uninspired use and the way modern cultivars have all been developed into dwarf, bun-shaped plants with an almost total lack of elegance.
Strangely enough those arbiters of public gardening taste, the horticultural societies, for all their innovative displays and dissemination of ideas, are as much to blame as anyone for the lack of innovative use of bedding plants. Until recently, showing a horticultural society garden judge a mass of annuals in regimented beds was far more likely to result in a prize than displaying a far less gaudy but infinitely more interesting garden. Top it off with busloads of visiting tourists marvelling at the show and garden centre promotions that tell us how easy and labour free it all is and it’s now wonder that gardeners either go overboard with bedding plants or reject them out-of-hand.
Plant breeders share some responsibility too, though they are really only catering to the demands of gardeners and the nursery trade. Have you noticed how over the years bedding plants have become smaller, more uniform and flower earlier in an increasing profusion of colours. This can be traced almost entirely to the need to have the plants in flower in the nursery punnets. To sell, bedding plants have to be fresh and they have to be showing colour. Old, straggly plants in flower don’t sell and neither do small green seedlings, but get a compact, fresh plant with a bloom or two and you’ve got a guaranteed mover. So it should be no surprise that garden centre shelves are stocked with ranks of petunia and pansy varieties that are effectively all the same plants just painted slightly different colours. It is almost as though the “cottage garden” revival with its emphasis on perennials and variety of form and colour had passed almost entirely unnoticed by the bedding plant growers.
Fortunately this situation may be changing, not through the introduction of new plants, but through more innovative and adventurous use of those already available. Gardeners are now more willing to break away from the solid blocks of colour and plant type and to mix various sizes, flowering seasons and foliage types, even to the extent of using bedding plants in perennial and shrub beds and not just as borders.
Here in Christchurch this trend has been most evident in the factory gardens. Many of the city’s larger factories used to have display gardens that entered garden competitions. Their gardens were often based on bedding plants and were designed to be at their best at the competition judging
time. Striking though they were, such gardens were often the very epitome of bedding plant vulgarity. In recent years, harsh economic conditions have forced the demise of many of the factory gardens. However, a few remain and even though they still compete, the changes in their use of plants reflects a more mature style of gardening that relies far less on simply wowing the viewer or judges.
Probably the best known of these gardens, and certainly the one with which I am most familiar, is the Sanitarium factory garden in Papanui. I’ve observed this garden for over 30 years and taken photographs there for the last 15, and in that time there have been marked changes. Where the old garden featured the traditional large beds packed with blocks of colour, the current garden, still heavily dependent on bedding plants, mixes sizes, colours and foliage forms to create far more of the feel of a very bright perennial border than a colour-by-numbers geometry lesson.
So even in the most traditional of circles there is a realisation that bedding plants don’t have to be used with the worst possible taste. Their colour can be used as an accent not a hammer blow and if we search out the old varieties there is even the possibility of having a range of sizes and flowering seasons.
That’s all very well, you may say, but other than whipping up the odd window box or hanging basket how do I get adventurous with bedding plants in my garden.
First, forget about numbers and rigid designs: you don’t have to have exactly the same number of each variety, they don’t all have to be exactly the same size and they don’t have to be arranged in pretty patterns. Certainly, have one formal bed or a couple flanking the drive, just don’t overdo it.
Second, avoid having everything reaching peak flowering at exactly the same time, and be prepared to replace sections of the garden as necessary to maintain interest. Tall growers like Cleome may take several months to mature and will be at their best from late summer, while small, quick plants like Nemesia may have to be replaced every eight weeks. Also, consider foliage-only bedding plants such as coleus, silver-leafed, cineraria, polka dot plant (Hypoestes) and bloodleaf (Iresine). Foliage can be just as effective as flowers and often lasts longer.
Third, try raising your own plants from seed. The large seed companies usually restrict their new releases to commercial growers. This can work to your advantage as the seed in the home gardener packs is often that of older, now less profitable varieties that may actually be more interesting because of their less uniform growth habit. Try the “cottage garden” or “heritage” style seeds too. These packs often include old varieties and occasionally a true species or two.
Forth and most importantly, don’t worry about the rules. Plant what you want wherever you think it will look best. Aim for profusion and variety. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is just to mix and broadcast seed on the garden, allowing it to germinate at will. For a combination of growth forms and colours sow or plant winter- or early spring-flowering plants where you have planted bulbs, or instead opt for later flowers that will disguise the fading foliage of the bulbs. Dot annuals among you perennials and you’ll lessen that often-present bare patch between those that flower in spring and the autumn-bloomers. Use colours creatively: mixtures of colour where profusion is desired, or patches of one colour to draw attention to a particular area.
It isn’t so much a matter of throwing caution to the wind as it is realising that there is no need to be restricted, no compulsion that bedding plants have to be planted in beds with other bedding plants. Why not have daises with succulents or grasses with petunias? Don’t be too concerned if the first year is an almost unmitigated disaster, after a year or two you’ll have a much better idea of what works well for you.
Copyright Geoff Bryant
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