
With a little ahead planning, stunning borders filled with blooms could be yours in each season
If you might have a border that may be seen from the home, or a compact backyard that’s seen from each window, you’ll need it to delight you with its blooms for as a lot of the 12 months as potential. Here’s how B&Q’s broad vary of border crops may also help.
That means combining crops that obligingly hug the bottom to minimise areas of naked soil with star performers which shoot up to grasp the limelight (earlier than bowing out and permitting others to proceed the present). Creating year-round curiosity and sustaining a excellent end on the similar time could be a problem, however with a little planning the crops you select will develop into the premise of a ‘chopping patch’, providing you with months of home-grown flowers to take pleasure in indoors and out.
1 Reliable performers
Start with a mixture of flowering shrubs that can bloom at completely different instances of the 12 months – these leafy crops will create the floral spine of your border and can flower 12 months after 12 months. Many can be lower and introduced indoors.
Spring colour: Welcome within the new season with the show-stopping flowers of camelia
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Alamy
Choose camellia and magnolia for spring blooms; roses, dwarf lilac and philadelphus, which explode into clouds of perfume in mid-summer; hydrangeas for drama as summer time fades into autumn; and witch hazel for its clove-like perfume and dainty winter flowers. For the very best present, resist pruning your flowering shrubs till after the blooms fade, and feed the roots with an all-purpose plant meals in spring and autumn.
2 Successional colour
Next, you want a collection of flowering perennials. Hellebores, hardy geraniums, heucheras and woman’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) all cowl naked soil superbly and flower for months, from late winter onwards, whereas peonies, penstemons, agapanthus, phlox and alstroemeria present brief bursts of fascinating colour in excessive summer time, and in addition make wonderful lower flowers.
Outside in: Snip vibrant Alliums to show indoors in addition to out
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Alamy
The third aspect in your year-round flower border are bulbs and corms. Crocus, daffodils, miniature iris, freesia, tulips and alliums can all be tucked into the soil between your shrubs and perennials in autumn, with solely a few months to wait till good blooms start to seem, from late winter and early spring. All could be snipped for fairly seasonal indoor vase shows.
Most flowering bulbs carry out greatest when the leaves are allowed to absolutely die again, as a result of this nourishes the bulbs for the next 12 months. The fading leaves can look a little messy, although. So, in case you can, attempt to place bigger bulbs resembling daffodils and alliums the place the ageing foliage will regularly develop into disguised by different leafy, spreading crops – hardy geraniums and decorative grasses are superb for this.
3 Fleeting beauties
Finally, there are annuals – these flowering crops are superb gap-fillers (do you have to nonetheless have any gaps) and lots of are excellent for chopping. Cosmos, love-in-a-mist (Nigella), tobacco-flowers (Nicotiana), zinnias, verbena and pot marigolds (Calendula) can all be grown from seed, or purchased as child crops and planted the place a shot of colour is required. Many of those summer-flowering annuals are additionally adored by pollinating bees and butterflies.
Bright blooms: Enjoy dahlia’s flowers effectively into late autumn
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Alamy
If you might have an obelisk or an arch to fill, you possibly can plant spring-flowering clematis and annual summer time climbers resembling sweet-peas and morning glory (Ipomoea). And don’t neglect lilies and dahlias: pots of those placing blooms could be purchased, and planted, in early summer time. Lilies will flower for two to three weeks and could be left in place, or lifted and saved for replanting subsequent 12 months. But dahlias will bloom into late autumn – particularly in case you preserve deadheading the fading stems. Choose easy daisy-flowered varieties for a up to date look, or go blowsy with dramatic cactus or pompon varieties, colour-clashed to great impact.
B&Q would possibly shock you
To improve your border with stunning blooms, go to your native B&Q backyard centre to discover what this season has to provide. For extra concepts, why not go to B&Q’s on-line backyard centre hub.