Do Seasons Make A Difference To What You Can Plant?
Gardening is an excellent form of relaxation and mindfulness, it’s easy to spend many hours out in your garden without realising how much time has passed.
Having a beautiful garden that you look after yourself can be very satisfying, whether you prefer an immaculate, well maintained garden, or a bit more of a wild meadow feel, knowing that you have coaxed the garden to look its best is a very proud feeling.
Getting the most out of your garden can depend on when you plant your favourite flowers, some plants can only be bedded in in the winter and others in the spring.
Let’s have a look at how you could plan out your garden for year-round joy.
Spring
Spring is a very popular time to start planting in your garden. After the long winter months, it can be very appealing to get out into the spring sunshine and start tending to the garden,
The best plants to start planting in the spring are any flowers that flower during the warm summer months, such as dahlias, begonias, roses, and lilies.
Spring can be a fairly unpredictable season, with days of very warm sunshine, but the nights can be cold and frosty still.
This can be a very difficult time for plants, so you may want to consider planting your flowers in pots that you can keep indoors overnight, until the frost has passed and they can safely be planted in the ground.
In spring, you should also start to see the fruits of your labour from your winter planting too, so take some time to enjoy them.
Summer
Summer is without doubt the best season to enjoy your garden. Most flowers bloom in these warmer months, so it is lovely to take some time for yourself and sit in your garden and enjoy your hard work over the year.
Summer months are not often the best time to start planting things, the ground becomes very dry and you will need to water your garden continually to encourage the flowers to start growing. This daily watering can easily be disrupted if you are away on your holidays for any period of time, so save the planting for now and enjoy your garden.
If you are lucky, you will have an abundance of flowers to enjoy yourself and give as gifts to friends and family. However, if you don’t have enough blooms but still want to bring some flower joy into another person’s life, then you could ask for flower delivery at flowerdelivery.ca to show someone you are thinking of them.
Autumn
Autumn is another beautiful month in the garden, especially if you have trees and shrubs that start to change to beautiful oranges and reds at this time.
Autumn is a really good time to start planting, as it is not generally too cold, but the soil is a bit more moist allowing for easy digging, and the sun is still shining most days.
Late autumn – early winter is a good time to start planting the bulbs of the first plants of spring, like daffodils, bluebells, tulips and crocuses.
Any summer bedding you had will need to be removed and replaced with winter bedding to keep your garden at its best over the colder, frostier winter months.
Winter
Winter is a good time for planting things like roses, and as said, early winter is perfect for spring flowering bulbs to go in the ground.
There are many winter flowering plants like winter pansies which are great to have in pots to keep your garden looking bright and beautiful throughout the winter.
Having evergreen plants in your garden can also stop your garden looking too dull in the duller months of the year.
Annual vs Perennial Flowers
Annual flowers are those that only live for one season and will need to be replanted every year.
This positive of these types of flowers is that you are not stuck with the same flower year in and year out if you don’t like them, and also that you can change the look of your garden every year.
Perennial flowers are ones that once they are planted will keep growing for many years, which is great for a fairly low maintenance garden. They can be a bit slower to get going than annuals, only flowering in their second or third year, but will last you for many years.
Biennials are a mixture of the both, typically lasting for two seasons – hence the ‘bi’ meaning two – in their name.
Annual Flowers For Spring
Pansies are a beautiful and bright annual flower to plant in your garden, and some varieties can be eaten, adding a beautiful touch to home cooking or baking, but especially cakes.
Sweet Alyssum are a beautiful, delicate white flower that has a light floral scent which is particularly delightful when sitting in the garden.
Snapdragons are a wonderful spring annual flower. They add so much colour to a garden after the long winter months, and bring children lots of fun by pressing the flowers so the ‘mouths’ open and close!
Annuals For Summer
Marigolds are a very popular summer annual, and with good reason. Their bright, sunset coloured leaves just shout ‘summer garden’ at you, and they have a heady summer scent that will have you relaxing in no time. These are another flower that have some varieties that can be eaten!
Geraniums are another very popular flower. Geraniums have a bit of a cult following, with some people having hundreds of them in the gardens, greenhouses and homes. There are many different colours and varieties of this plant, and many have their own individual fragrance.
Busy Lizzies are a beautiful flower that usually comes in shades of pink and white. They work very well in containers and will give you flowers throughout the summer providing they are looked after.
Cornflowers are a very popular addition to the garden, they come in a few colours, but blue is by far the most popular. Cornflowers are often added to areas of meadow or wildflower garden, the bees love them
Annuals For Autumn
Petunias are often thought of as pink flowers, but they are available in a whole rainbow of colours. These beautiful, horn shaped flowers are excellent in hanging baskets and will hang over the sides. They are quite hardy, hence being perfect for autumn, and can put up with a lot of abuse meaning they are fairly low maintenance.
Calendula comes in lovely autumnal shades of oranges and yellows, and really adds an autumn feeling to a garden. You may have heard the name Calendula before, as it is commonly made into essential oils for use in the home and in beauty. The flowers are usually edible too.
Begonias have large, multi flowered blooms which are very pleasing to look at. Mostly available in pink, they will put a smile on anyone’s face.
Annuals For Winter
Sweet Peas are well renowned for their beautiful fragrance, and their pretty pastel colours. Although these flowers look very delicate, they are actually very hardy and will cope with the lower, wetter temperatures in the winter.
Primrose can be found in almost any English garden, and although they come in a whole variety of colours, the most popular are the light yellow colours. These tend to flower in the very late winter to early spring.
Perennial Plants
Perennials are those plants you can rely on year after year to keep your garden looking beautiful.
Lavender is an excellent perennial, it is fairly easy to grow and puts up with the hot season just as well as it does the cold. The scent of lavender is amazing, and attracts lots of wildlife. Lavender can be dried and used in a variety of ways, including adding to your bath water, or in muslin bags to help you sleep. Lavender can also be eaten,and made into essential oil.
Delphiniums grow very well, and their lovely purple and blue colours look beautiful in any garden, but particularly when placed next to lavender. You can cut the flowers to take inside to encourage new growth.
Hydrangeas have the most beautiful, large flowers that are particularly suited to shady areas. These beautiful flowers grow very well, so they will need to be given the space to grow over the years. They come in mainly blues and pinks, which are just as beautiful as each other.
Buddleia is also known as the butterfly plant, and it does indeed attract a whole variety of wildlife. The plant needs very little care apart from cutting it back at the end of every season, which you can do quite drastically, even if you cut it back to a stump, it will grow back the next year.
Aster are a beautiful perennial that is available in many different colours, and come into flower in the autumn, so after your other plants are going into hibernation, the Aster will come out and keep your garden looking beautiful.
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