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Sometimes the distinctions between types are affected
by climate; for example, in cooler zones the perennial
antirrinhum is grown as an annual. Sometimes annuals
perpetuate themselves, scattering seed that readily
germinates where it falls. Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena)
is an annual that provides you with flowers year after
year in this way.
Annuals have a multitude of roles to play in the garden.
They are particularly valuable when you are starting
from scratch and are confronted with bare patches of
earth, with a few young shrubs and perennials as yet
too small to have much effect. Seeds of annuals sown
in the spring will provide a colourful display for the
whole of those first summers while more permanent plants
are becoming established. This also gives you an opportunity
to play with ideas about colours and arrangements of
colours within does a palette of soft blues and pinks
look near the house? Will a dull corner be brought to
with gleaming reds and yellows? Experiments with annuals
help you make decisions that have longer-term effects
on the overall appearance of your plot.
Even when the basic framework garden, provided by trees,
shrubs and perennials, is beginning to take shape, most
gardeners like to introduce a fresh note of colour into
the summer by using annuals. The fun lies in ringing
the changes and trying out different colour combinations
and new varieties of plants each year. Both house and
garden benefit from this versatility, as many annuals
last well as cut flowers. Serious flower arrangers who
need a steady supply of plant material may consider
devoting a patch of the vegetable garden to their favourites
so that they do not have to deplete the garden's display.
Annuals are relatively time-consuming. calling for regular
watering, staking in some cases, weeding and dead-heading.
The amount of space you allocate them will therefore
depend to some extent on the amount of time you have
available to devote to them. Another consideration is
cost: if you do not raise your own plants from seed,
buying them as bedding plants from a garden centre or
nursery can prove expensive.
SITING Choose and site carefully to make the
most of your purchases, planting them in tight groups
to make an impact rather than setting them too far apart
just to fill a space. When designing a bed of annuals,
the usual common-sense rules apply about placing tallgrowing
specimens such as larkspar (Delphinium ajacis), cosmos
and lavatera at the back, with clumps of medium height
in the centre and dwarfs for edging at the front. Low,
spreading plants will help to smother weeds, too. Try
to strike a balance between different shapes, including
some straight-stemmed showy speci-mens like rudbeckias
and some that provide a cloud of delicate colour like
gypsophila. Contrast the ragged heads of cornflowers
(Centaurea species) with daisylike chrysanthemums and
frilly sweet peas.
CONTAINERS Annuals come into their own in the planting
up of containers. The bleakest spot can be completely
transformed by pots, tubs, window-boxes and hanging
baskets spilling over with summer flowers. As well as
pelargoniums and impatiens (see Perennials), petunias,
marigolds, lobelia and lobularia do well in containers.
For successful results it is important to remember that
all containers dry out quickly and need regular watering.
Larger containers with correspondingly greater amounts
of compost retain moisture longer. Wind dries out the
compost as quickly as the heat of the sun.
HANGING BASKETS Hanging baskets are an ingenious
way of displaying summer-flowering plants and have become
very popular. Wire baskets permit you to trail flowerstems
through the mesh, but are slightly tricky to plant up.
Balance them on a heavy bucket while you work. Line
the basket with a small amount of moss which has been
soaked in water and wrung out. Cover with a layer of
potting compost. Set plants around the edge, carefully
pushing the root balls between the wires. Cover with
compost and another batch of plants. Continue in this
way until the basket is full. Solid plastic containers
with a water reservoir incorporated have a flat base
which makes planting and maintenance easier.
Annuals grown in containers need a good peatbased compost
with a shallow layer of drainage material at the bottom.
Soak the compost thoroughly several hours before planting
up and do not let it dry out at any time. Within 2-3
weeks the plants will require supplementary feeding,
preferably in the form of liquid fertilizer. Dead-head
regularly to encourage the flowering.
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