Search Results for: zinnia

May has burst onto the scene in a bit frothy mass of Cow parsley and May blossom. I absolutely adore this time of year and the fact that its feels like we have had a prolonged cold spring the green beauty is all the more welcome.

There is something glorious about that fresh spring green at this time of year, here in the north we have plenty of rain, which at times has been a bit of a pain but the garden is definitely better for it and everything is looking healthy and ready to put on a show.

Its such a busy time of year too with the peak of seed sowing, pricking out, starting to harden off and plant. Lots of juggling in the greenhouse, keeping an eye on overnight temperatures in case of late frosts. Realising that you have way too much of one thing and not enough of another. I think it has definitely been a year to hold back and sow things later, working with the seasonal conditions. Some of my early sowings failed or had poorer germination, for example with the annual Phlox ‘Creme Brulee’ and ‘Sugar Stars’ later sowing was much more successful. But then I remember I was later with this last year and I was still cutting it way into October. So there is still plenty of time for sowing.

I planted my sweet peas in 2 spots this year. My usual spot by the greenhouse they went in first, had a little bit of a sulk about the cold soil but are now growing away strongly. Though will definitely be flowering a bit later this year. Then this year I’m also planting up the old chicken run which still has all the chicken wire around so planting round the edge of that with more sweet peas and have planted my Cobeaea scandens in there and they are romping away already. The sweet peas had got a bit pot bound but seem to be settling in now. This soil will be very rich I think because of all the chicken poo! This will suit the sweet peas but may not for all the other annuals but its a bit of an experiment this year to give me more growing space and also while we decide longterm what to do with this bit of the garden.

Also planted in here are my Larkspur, Ammi visnaga, Chrysanthemum ‘Rainbow Hippy Love child’, Statice Blue. Some Scabiosa, Cynoglossum and Matthiola. The good thing about this bed is that I can stop Jed my cat from getting in there as the door is still on!! Having a bit of an issue as lots of my beds for annuals and cutflowers are raised beds and Jed keeps digging up plants that I put in there!! He’s driving me mad, I’ve got bamboo sticking up everywhere to try and stop him. He’s OK once they are established as he doesn’t seem to get in there then but its a bit of an ongoing battle at the moment.

My autumn sown annuals are coming good now, already picked some Orlaya but Cornflowers look about to pop and the Corncockle, Calendula and Ammi majus are not far off. Also planted out Scabiosa ‘Ping Pong’, Echium and my favourite for foliage, Cerinthe.

Juggling round the greenhouse are Cosmos, lots of Zinnia, Phlox and Sunflowers! Fighting for positions with tomato plants, cucumbers, squash and aubergines, plus potted up Dahlias and Aeonium cuttings to replace all the ones I lost in the frosts.

Its also a time to cherish your biennials that should be flowering with abundance now, well I’ve been picking wallflowers, forget-me-nots, Honesty and sweet rocket anyway. Here is a small posy with Wallflower ‘Ivory White’ (yes its not white at all but I love it, starts off with pale yellow buds fading to a rich cream colour and a lovely delicate scent). Arriving soon at Higgledy Garden! Also in the mix are forget-me-nots which self seed all over my garden, white Honesty and blue and white Spanish Bluebells which I’ve decided as I can’t seem to remove them completely from my garden enjoy them while they are here are pick them to stop them spreading even more seed around!

My sweet william are covered in buds but not quite ready yet and the foxgloves are sending up tall spires ready to flower soon. I’m also trying Canterbury bells for the first time this year so excited to see how they do. Once your biennials start flowering you need to know that this is also an alert to start thinking about sowing for next years flowers. Keep an eye on the Higgledy garden website for new biennials and special offers coming soon.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Higgledy Anne

(I’m on instagram anne_hinks and on Twitter Anne Hinks if you fancy a follow)

Green, a colour that exudes freshness, vitality and a sense of renewal. In this blog post, I’ll be sharing my experience growing three green flower varieties that I’m really excited about, Nicotiana Lime Green, Dill Mammoth, and Zinnia Envy.

First up is Nicotiana Lime Green. I’m love with its delicate, lime green blooms that seem to glow in the sunlight. This plant has a wonderful evening fragrance, so I can’t wait to see (and smell) it in full bloom. To grow Nicotiana Lime Green, I’ll be using the same sowing method that has worked for me in the past – sprinkling the seeds onto pre-watered compost, covering lightly with more compost, and then crossing my fingers for some plant god blessings!

Next up is Dill Mammoth, a herb that not only has culinary uses but also produces beautiful green flowers that add a unique touch to any bouquet. I love how the delicate, lacey flowers of dill contrast with other bolder blooms, making it an excellent filler. And of course, it’s always great to have fresh herbs on hand for cooking too! I’ll be both sowing the dill seeds directly into the ground in a sunny spot, as well as in containers on the windowsill, and hoping for a bumper crop of scented blooms!

Last but not least, we have Zinnia Envy, a stunning lime green zinnia with a unique shape and texture. I’m particularly excited to see how this variety pairs with other bold colours in my garden, as I imagine it would make a great zingy addition to late summer bouquets. Like the other two varieties, I’ll be sowing Zinnia Envy onto pre-watered compost, covering with a little more compost, and waiting patiently for the seedlings to emerge.

Green flowers may not be as common as other colours, but their unique beauty and freshness make them well worth growing. And they are especially useful to bring a zingy freshness to bouquets! I can’t wait to see how these three varieties perform in my garden, and I hope you’re inspired to give them a try too. Happy sowing!

Gemma (Colour Wheel Garden)

Ahoy there! Let us have a quick delve into the world of the half-hardy annual flower.

What is a half-hardy flower?

Half-hardy annuals such as Cosmos, Rudbeckia, Zinna and Nicotiana will die if exposed to the cold, so they can’t go into the garden until after the last frost. Generally, these flowers will be native to somewhere more toasty than the UK where they can lounge about at their leisure setting seed more or less when they like due to the lack of seasons and the lack of cell-damaging frost. Here in the UK, we are big into seasons and any visiting plants have to tow the party line. This means we have to do one of two things. Either, sow them in pots under glass, or sow them directly into the soil after the frosts have wobbled off. The lines can be blurred as to which plants are hardy and half-hardy, it’s not an exact science. The Higgledy portfolio of seeds leans more towards hardy flowers but we have plenty of half-hardy ones too.

Here is a link to the 28 half-hardy flowers we have in stock this season.

How do we grow half-hardy flowers from seed?

Sowing directly into the soil:

Many flower farmers I know sow their half-hardy seeds straight into the soil. Most wait until May before doing this, when the soil has warmed up and frosts are unlikely…at least they are unlikely to happen after the seedlings emerge. We had a fierce frost on May 17th a few years back that wiped out a few dozen Comsos that I had started under glass in April and planted out on May 1st. I was most miffed.

Half-hardy flower seeds tend to be very fine or slight….don’t sow them very deep….better still, just cover them with a light cover of compost. Sowing in straight drills will make it easy to see what is a seedling and what is a ‘weedling’.

Limited edition bundle: 10 packets of half-hardy seeds with 25% off and free shipping.

Sowing in pots:

Sowing in pots is the preferred Higgledy method. To the uninitiated, it may sound like more work but it is often considerably much less so. ‘How so?!’, I hear you cry. Well….once you have sown your seed directly into the soil, the native weed seeds will also join in the fun. Native weeds are more adapted to our soils and climate and will outcompete our chums the half-hardy seedlings. A chap can find himself spending hours weeding around tiny seedlings and once again feeling most miffed. If you have sown in pots…from say early April, your seedlings will be biggish and strong and ready for adventures in the outside world by mid-May. At this time you can gently hoe off any weeds on your flower bed and this will massively slow down any further weed growth. Simply plant your seedlings about a foot apart and mulch around them with some compost if you have some spare…this will annoy the weeds further.

I wouldn’t start sowing before the spring equinox, which is around the 22nd March. Most of my half-hardy annuals get sown in early April.

I use 3-inch square pots…15 sit nicely in a standard seed tray and the pesky slugs find it difficult to hide anywhere between the pots. Use good quality compost. I use Melcourt compost. 15 seedlings will fill a meter and a half….so a large tray holding 4 seed trays will cover 6 square meters. It’s important to be aware of this. Lots of folk tend to grow several times more seedlings than they need in very small pots….this usually results in weak and leggy plants…do not make this mistake….you will look foolish and it will be your turn to feel most miffed.

Which half-hardy flowers will be grown in the Higgledy Garden this year?

I will have to ask Higgledy Anne and Higgledy Gemma what they are growing in their cutting patches…and I’ll ask them to let us all know. As for Flash and me…we will certainly be growing our ‘fav five’, Rudbeckia ‘Irish Eyes’, Zinnia ‘Cactus’, Nicotiana ‘Lime Green’, and Cosmos ‘Purity’. We’ll also certainly grow climbing Rudbeckia ‘Flash Mix’. …and I think Anne might have started me a few Cobaea, because she is lovely like that.

All of these can of course be found in the Higgledy Garden Seed Shop.

Your Half Hardy Annuals should flower from July, right through until the November frosts.

I hope this has been useful and has set you on a path to cut flower patch stardom. ;)

If you have any questions you can find me on Facebook, Twitter and you will see heaps of photos of flowers, the boat garden and Flash on Instagram.

Kind regards

Higgers and Flash

In unrelated news….it’s snowing in Boatland!

Lets talk about shape:
Now I’m not talking about hourglass or athletic, body shape is a topic best left to a different kind of blog. I’m talking about flower shapes and typically what shapes work really well to make a good mixed bouquet. Now before we get started it’s worth noting when it comes to making a bouquet there are ultimately no rules, you do what feels right for you. At the end of the day if you pick yourself some flowers of any kind and stick them in a water filled container of any kind, you have yourself an arrangement. How fantabulous!

But, if like me, you wish you had a bit more of a guideline on how to make your bouquets look well mixed, abundant and balanced then flower shapes are really helpful to think about. When growing cut flowers for making bouquets, there are five different flower shapes that I find really helpful to use and these are: focal, lace, spike, daisy and texture. If you grow a good mix of these ingredients, you are sure to have lovely abundant bouquets!

FOCAL
(Also called accent flowers, wow flowers, the brides and show stoppers).
These are your main stars of the show, typically voluptuous, loud and proud, blousy and fabulous. The ones that all your other flowers support and give your bouquet the wow factor. Without them a bouquet can look delicate, pretty and sweet, but in my opinion, can also lack that show stopping umph! Now focal flowers needn’t consist of only expensive ingredients such as roses and peonies. Plants like these, as fabulous as they are, are very expensive and produce few stems for a lot of money.

There are some great seed grown alternatives that will give you that wow factor for just a fraction of the cost! Godetia Crown, is a great example, this often-forgotten flower produces amazingly vibrant pink flowers in late spring and early summer that look absolutely gorgeous in an arrangement. Another great focal flower is Sunflower Vanilla Ice, this is a great sunflower because unlike a lot of other sunflowers the flower head is not too big. There is a fine line between a good focal flower and an outright dominating flower that makes a bouquet look out of proportion, vanilla ice gets that balance just right. Another often forgotten but fabulous flower is Malope Vulcan, this plant produces masses of hot pink trumpet like flowers. They last really well in the vase and really pack a punch in colour. Another great option is Aster Ostrich Plume, with large early flowering feathery heads in purples, pinks and whites, it is a real flamboyant flower! And not a lot could be more joyful than Chrysanthemum Rainbow Hippy Love-child! This has to be one of the cheeriest flowers to grow, large outward facing flowers that wouldn’t look out of place in a tie-die competition. They are fun, joyful and a great alternative focal flower.

But as wonderful as focal flowers are, they really benefit from mixing with other flower shapes to create a beautifully abundant but balanced looking bouquet. If you mixed a load of different focal flowers together in a bunch they would compete for attention, just like a diva sing off on the X factor, you wouldn’t know where to look. This is why the other four flower shapes are just as important as they make your bouquet to look wonderfully abundant but also allow your focal flowers to shine!

LACE
(Also known as umbellifers, fillers, and ethereal flowers).
Lace flowers are fantastic to add to bouquets these are the graceful ingredients, adding air, lightness and a romantic delicateness. Resembling lace caps, with lots of tiny flowers, often with a little space between each flower, these fill a bouquet wonderfully without making it feel dense. There are absolutely loads of lovely lace flowers that will give this beautiful ethereal look including: Gypsophila, Daucus, Ammi, Dill, Phlox, Cleome, Honesty, Hesperis, Candytuft, Phacelia, Sweet William, and even Statice. These all make wonderful lace flowers and are absolutely fantastic fillers.

SPIKE
(Also known as spires, turrets or structural flowers).
No, I’m not talking about any plants with spikey thorns, rather upward vertical spires, often very showy in their own right, but because of the difference in their shape, spikes actually compliment rather than compete with your focal flowers and they are wonderful addition to bouquets as they stop your arrangement from becoming flat and dome like but rather give it height and dimension.
Spikes are wonderful as they really help with the overall feel of an arrangement, you can opt for something larger and more statuesque to give your bouquet real drama and wow factor or something smaller to give a more pretty “scooped up from the garden” feel. Whatever you opt for, spikes literally elevate your bouquet and take it to another level. Some fantastic spikes include: Larkspur Imperials, Larkspur Giant Hyacinth, Nicotiana Sensation, Salvia Viridis, Night scented stock, and Foxgloves.

DAISY
(Also known as supporting flowers, and bridesmaids).
These are the shapes that might be similar to the flowers you first drew as a child. Typicallly a simple circle centre with petals on the outside or a shape very similar. They’re very pretty and give your bouquet a real flowery abundance feel. You might decide you’d prefer to use lots of daisy flowers as the focal flower instead, as they can be quite showy in their own right. But it can also be nice to use them in addition to your focal flower as they are often a little bit smaller and daintier than focal flowers, this way your focal flower acts as the bride of the bouquet and the daisy shapes act as the bridesmaids, complimentary but not competing. It’s all about preference. I personally like to play around with both ways depending how the mood takes me. Some fantastic daisy flowers include:  Calendula, Cosmos, Cornflower, Corncockle, Rudbeckia and Zinnia.

TEXTURE
(Also known as airy accents, delicate details, and movement pieces)
These often-overlooked ingredients add movement and magic to an arrangement, and can be the finishing touches that make an arrangement seemingly dance. They have shape often with a beautiful curving habit or wonderful explosive textures. They are often elevated either slightly above a bouquet or cascading around one side. Textural ingredients can be the difference between a static lifeless bouquet and one that appears to be alive with joy, drama and movement. Fantastic textural ingredients include the dramatic cascading tassels of Amaranthus, the shimmering arching grass pods of Briza as well as the gorgeous almost galaxy coloured Cerinthe. And for beautifully textured seed pods you cannot go wrong with the classic queen of seed pods also known as Nigella or the wonderfully bouncy joyful seedpods of Scabious Ping Pong.

There you have it! Five flower shapes to grow in your cutting garden. Happy flower growing!

from Higgledy Gemma (a.k.a colour wheel garden)

It’s deep mid-winter, the festivities of Christmas are over, the decorations all put away back up to the attic for another year. You are still feeling a bit stodgy from all the food and Baileys that you have been tucking into over Christmas, but can’t really get going with your New Year exercise regime. The weather isn’t helping, it’s grey and cold outside, some days it doesn’t seem to get light at all. Going into the garden feels like a battle, the grass is soggy and everything just looks brown and sad. But I actually like this time of year, its slow, you have time to breathe and ponder. I work in a plant nursery (Bluebell Cottage Nursery) as well as for Higgledy Garden seeds, have a newish garden and grow my own cut flowers and so once spring is here I don’t stop. It’s chaotic, sowing, pricking out, potting on, it’s fantastic but fast and doesn’t really slow down until September. So I actually need this time of year to recuperate, to rest, to read and most importantly to dream……

I love the fact that at this time of year you just feel like it’s a clean slate, wipe out what happened last year, this year you will be on top of it, this year you will have that perfect cutting garden! Weeds will be culled, seeds will be sown in succession and pricked out at the optimum time, you will label all your trays meticulously so that you don’t end up planting a vibrant pink Cosmos in your white border, the slugs won’t eat all your Zinnia seedlings, you will remember to sow biennials when really you are rushed off your feet, the cat won’t dig up all your newly planted Rudbeckias, you will pinch out your seedlings at an early stage (when it feels so so wrong) to enable you to get sturdy plants, you will pinch out the tendrils on your sweet peas to stop them distorting your beautiful long flower stems, you will stake and support your plants before they collapse and you will keep deadheading to keep everything flowering for as long as possible. This year will be perfect*!

*it never is but you can pretend it will be.

I love to plan ahead, think about what I would like to grow, about what colour combinations I’d like to try and where I’d like to grow them. Last year we had some new raised beds made in the garden but we didn’t finish filling them with soil and compost until May time so my cut flower plants just went in anywhere as soon as I had room. So this year I’d like to plan a bit better. My Cobaea got planted in a spot with too much shade so didn’t start flowering until November so I’ve got my eye on a sunnier spot this year.

So what to grow this year, this is the fun bit, but it’s a good idea to look back and see what did well, what failed, what grew bigger than it said on the seed packet, what didn’t work as a cut flower or what you could have done with lots more of. Get out your seed boxes, see what seeds you have left, get rid of any you don’t want to grow again, make a list of what you are low on. Look back at your photos, look at your diary, and see what you should have sown earlier or later or in larger amounts.

For me, I had good success with Phlox ‘Sugar Stars’, it was slow to get going and I’ve learnt you have to keep pinching it out to get long stems. But it last ages in a vase and has such a delicious sweet scent.

The Cosmos this year were fabulous. I grew four varieties ‘Purity’, Sensation’, Fizzy Rose’ from Higgledy garden and a new variety called ‘Apricotta’ which was just as good as the other tried and tested varieties.

I need more sunflowers in my life, You can’t beat ‘Vanilla Ice’ such a perfect size for cutting and a lovely pale yellow which goes well with lots of other colours.

Think about what would you like to experiment with, any new varieties? I’d like to have a proper go at Amaranthus Red and Malope ‘Vulcan’ some vibrant colours. Plus properly master Zinnias, I had a few last year but I need more of that zing in my life, some acid greens from Dill and Nicotiana ‘Lime’, maybe some Cornflower ‘Black Ball’ as a dark contrast, what about some Calendula ‘Art Shades’ for a contrasting orange vibe and some Cerinthe which I love for filler foliage. Ooh my mouth is watering.

Or maybe a romantic pastel combination Corncockle, Larkspur for spiky flowers for contrasting flower shape, long flowering Cosmos ‘Fizzy Rose’, pale yellow Calendula ‘Ice Maiden’, the pastel dolly mixture colours of Nigella ‘Persian Jewels and Ammi visnaga for that feathery foliage and white flowers. Ah a calming combo.

So embrace the dark and cold days, get a cup of tea and plan for a colourful summer. Browse through seed catalogues, look on the Higgledy Garden website and dream……