G ARD E NING
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ngagement ring glittering on your daughter’s hand and the date set for the marriage; a country wedding with a reception in your garden in a year’s time. Short of transplanting ready-made shrubs and roses, how on earth do you get your flowerbeds quivering on the edge of flowery perfection for that most important of days?
The ideal time frame is to start planning a year in advance – to the day, if possible. Go out and scrutinise the garden warts and all. Plan exactly where you are going to have the marquee and all the paraphernalia of party giving. Focus on the bits of the garden that are going to be used. Flower beds and borders in these areas are the ones to be worked over and given an injection of colour for the wedding. You are going to achieve this with plugs, seeds and bulbs. Run your eye over the garden in its current state with a most discerning and critical eye. You are going to have to get your maintenance up to scratch. There is no getting away from a thorough and regular hoeing through all the beds. Earmark shrubs that will need a winter renovation pruning. Don't remove any plants that are under performing or that you actively dislike. This can be done in the early spring. Gardening methodically through the borders will begin to give you an idea of where gaps are, what leaf and flower forms are already in the border that you will be working with. Agree on the colour scheme now. With this in mind you can begin to choose plants. You cannot rely on newly planted perennials to make any sort of a substantial show in their first year of growing. There are some notable exceptions and I suggest that you buy these
in as plug plants and pot them up and bring them on under cover (see more below). The main circus ponies however will be annuals and hardy annuals. These are going to be sown and grown from seed and I will give you full instructions in my next article. Order your seed catalogues now. My favourite is Chiltern Seeds but Seedahoiic, Moles Seeds and Sarah Raven are all good too. The template for this guide, is a garden in Melton, Woodbridge and the bride to be gave us green, white and blue as her wedding colours. My advice, once the colours are decided, go through the seed catalogues looking also for time of flowering and height and spread of the plant. Check that your choice is limited to easy to germinate and grow lists. Our check-list also included the necessity to make an impact in the distance. After all, bride and guests are not going to hover right over the flowers – their role is definitely as back drop. This means that you want to go for plants with some stature and impact. Don't get carried away – ten different types of seeds are more than enough. Now a bit about those plug plants I mentioned: The Melton wedding date was early August so these were the plants that made it onto the short list for buying or ordering immediately. Agastache Black Adder – we got 25 and they arrived in December and got potted up and stored out of the heavy winter rain. They make a really good tall blue statement from July onwards. Verbena hastata Blue Spires came with the same order and it is well described by its name – making elegant mini organ lofts of spires and loved by the bees.
The last of our winter deliveries was Catananche caerulea and we had both white and blue plugs which once planted out looked totally stunning in amongst the Stipa tenuissima grasses in the wedding garden. The above plugs that I have mentioned arrived in units of 10s or 20s and sat relatively undisturbed in the greenhouse until warm spring weather came and with it the need to pay attention to the watering. Our next drop of plugs arrived in mid March with 50 specimens to a tray. The plant roots were in a medium about the size of a cotton reel. There was a half day’s work involved in translation 350 small plants into 9cm pots in potting compost. These we grew on and watered and kept shaded from really hot mid-day sun and eventually planted out about six weeks on. If you shop like this, the plants will cost you about £1 each and judiciously chosen will fill your existing flowerbeds with repeating colour. Our trays of 50 included Gaura Whirligig – a rather lax plant that throws out sparkling white flowers for weeks on end and this was chosen together with the repeat flowering cranesbill, named Geranium Roxanne to fill gaps at the front of the borders. Lastly, think about dahlias and late bulbs such as gladiolus. Order these at the same time as the seeds.
INFORMATION Catharine Howard is a designer, gardener and plantswoman with many years of creating and renovating gardens. For a consultation or garden design contact her at: www.catharinehoward.co.uk
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