Autumn is the time to sow sweet peas for Spring flowering. Photo / Getty Images.
Autumn is the time to sow sweet peas for Spring flowering. Photo / Getty Images.
Autumn is the perfect time to sow seeds or plants that will give you a great show in spring. By now, most flowers are past their best, so it’s time to do some advanced planning. Here are my picks.
Alyssum adds colour and cover to your garden. Photo/Getty Images.
Alyssum
Plants like alyssum are great for any border and thesweet scent of their flowers will gradually increase as the weather gets warmer. This delicate white flower is a firm favourite, as it makes a great companion for vegetable gardens, and is a solid border plant, helping you to maximise space in your growing beds. Autumn is an optimal time to get these bedded in.
Autumn is the time to sow sweet peas for spring flowering. Photo / Getty Images.
My absolute top picks have to be sweet peas! Every gardener will benefit from having these beautifully-fragrant producers in your garden, and a freshly plucked bunch of sweet peas will fill your home with a heavenly scent. They bring such joy and produce prolific flowers - indeed, the more you pick, the more they produce.
Getting sweet pea seeds to germinate can sometimes prove a difficult task, however. The best way I have found is to soak the seeds overnight, which helps to soften the hard outer shell, making the task of germination much easier. These can either be directly sown into their final growing place or germinated in pots and transplanted at a later date.
It is good to remember here, as we head towards the shortest daylight hours in June, that germination and growth will be much slower than at any other time of the year.
Sweet peas will appreciate a frame or wire netting to grow up as, once supported, they will grow abundantly. If you are in a windy spot, remember to put a soft tie around them to support them in the wind. They can tolerate a lot of wind and will adapt their growing to the way the wind blows them, as their tendrils wrap round each other to make the plant strong.
There are many different colours of sweet peas, so be sure to choose the colours you like to have in your garden, or for a riotous display, mix the seed packets together to form a rainbow of colours. From germination, your sweet peas will take about three months to burst into flower.
Matthiola incana is more commonly called Stock. Photo/Getty Images.
Stock
Stock is a very underrated plant these days - and I’m calling for a much-deserved revival. It has beautiful fragrant flowers and comes in white, purple, pink, red, and a creamy pale colour. These plants are hardy and love being planted in the cooler months. They flower for a long time and have very long seed pods which, if harvested and dried, will give you stock plants forever, so they are a good pick for the seed bank! They like to be planted in well-fertilised, free draining soil, and are a sublime choice for the balcony gardener, as they grow well in pots.
Forget-Me-Nots are an excellent ground cover plant. Photo/Getty Images.
Forget-Me-Nots
My last pick is ever faithful forget-me-nots… Some people consider them weeds, but I like to look at them as a plant that will fill a space where not much else grows. Why not fill these barren spaces with a splash of colour and hope? Forget-me-nots make excellent ground cover and will grow in shady spaces that look particularly stunning when spring bulbs pop through them.
I hope you all enjoy sowing some beautiful flowers this autumn.
