The biennials are starting to bloom and they are so useful to have in your cutting patch, Wallflowers especially are great for adding vibrant colour or pastel shades to your bouquets and posies. Mine have been flowering for a few weeks now and will keep going into early summer especially if you keep picking them and stopping them from trying to set seed. They also have a big advantage of being scented and I have to say that their scent is delicious, sweet but not too strong. Some of the spring bulbs like Hyacinths can have a scent that is a bit too overwhelming for me. But wallflowers have that delicate scent that just wafts around your room adding a touch of sweetness. They generally come in shades of yellows, oranges and reds but there also some nice purples and bright pinks too.
I’ve given them a whole raised bed to themselves this year but I am too conservative in the spacing and I think I could really pack them in for next year. Also many people keep them growing for a couple of year so treat them as a short lived perennial until they become too woody and unproductive so thats another option too.
Higgledy garden sells three varieties. Wallflower ‘Ivory White’, this is really a pale yellow colour, its starts off as creamy yellow in bud and then as it opens it fades to a creamy white. Not really Ivory white at all! But it is lovely and goes beautifully with one of my favourite spring flower the Forget-me-not, another biennial by the way, which seeds all round my garden.
Here it is in a posy with blue forget-me-nots, spanish bluebells, White Honesty and white Cytisus.
Then there is Wallflower ‘Cloth of Gold’, a rich golden yellow, which goes well with the rich plum coloured tulips or with vibrant purple of Honesty.
Here it is in a posy with more Honesty (a cultivar called ‘Corfu Blue’) and a bevy of Narcissus ‘Thalia’, ‘Toto’ and ‘Minnow’. I think that warm yellow looks gorgeous against that lilac blue.
Finally there is the sumptuous Wallflower ‘Vulcan’, a dark red,very sexy colour, again would go well against bright orange tulips or purple tones.
Here in an arrangement with Ranunculus ‘Chocolate’, Helleborus ‘Star of Passion’, Honesty, Narcissus ‘Thalia’ and white Forget-me-nots.
They are best sown in May or June, they are small black seeds and these can be sown directly by broadcasting over the bed or in rows where you would like them to grow. Sow thinly, cover with a thin layer of soil or compost and and thin out to a spacing of about 30cm once germinated. Alternatively sow thinly in seed trays or 9cm pots, cover lightly with compost and prick out into individual modules or pots. Plant out in final positions once rooted. I tend to sow in seed trays and pot on as I very rarely have the space to sow them directly in the height of summer! One thing that Higgledy Gemma noted that her earlier sown wallflowers tried to start flowering in November and were shorter more compact plants. This would be good if you want to grow your wallflowers in containers or in the garden amongst your bulbs but the ones that she sowed later were taller, so longer stems for cutting. Its a fine balance really but one thing I’ve also found is that they don’t take well to getting root bound, pot on into bigger pots if not quite ready to plant out or plant out into final positions as soon as you can to prevent any checks in growth. They prefer to be planted in a sunny or partially shade spot. They are pretty tolerant with any soil type, growing best in in good well-drained soils but they are called wallflowers because they can often be seen growing in any cracks in walls.
You can often buy them as bare root plants in the autumn for planting out for the following spring or often garden centres sell them in modules but just be aware that many of these are shorter varieties more often used in bedding schemes or for planting amongst your tulips and other bulbs, they are great for that by the way and Sarah Raven is a real fan for growing as a colour complement to tulips.
Here is Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ in a mix of Aquilegias, Chive flowers, Lychnis ‘White Robin’ and Heuchera ‘Greenfinch’.
Its worth noting that you can also get perennial forms of wallflowers and probably the most well know in Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ which is a fabulous plant with silvery grey foliage and purple flowers that are often in flower nearly all year round. Keep deadheading it to prolong flowering. The bees love though be aware that it is not scented. I’ve used it as a cutflower and its very useful. It is perennial but often thought of as a short-lived perennial they flower so much that eventually they are just so exhausted that they keel over and die, usually over winter, but still great value as a plant. You can also propagate it from cuttings. There has been lots of breeding of these now so there is quite a range of colours often with hints of apricot and orange which are really lovely.
So as I said it will soon be biennial sowing time for sowing of not just wallflowers but also Honesty, Sweet William, Hesperis, Foxgloves and Canterbury bells, myself, Ben and Gemma we will be doing lots of blogs, sow-alongs, social media posts to help you along with this so get following us all and watch this space.
There will be a new biennial bundle coming soon too!
Higgledy Anne
(I’m on Instagram anne_hinks if you fancy a follow)