Start to sow for next year’s garden
Looking ahead can reap rich rewards, saving money
Although summer has barely started, if you can find time to think about next year’s garden now you can save yourself a lot of money. Early summer is the perfect time to sow biennials, plants that produce leaves one summer then go dormant through winter before flowering, setting seeds and dying back the following year.
Foxgloves, hollyhocks (though these can also be grown as short-lived perennials), aquilegias, honesty, sweet rocket, Arctic poppies, Nicotiana sylvestris, wallflowers and sweet Williams are just some of the varieties that you can sow now, giving them time to grow large enough to be potted on in autumn and overwintered. Hardy biennial seedlings can go straight into the soil, but more frost–averse types such as nicotiana, should be potted up and kept undercover through winter.
Many biennials will readily self-seed, meaning that come late summer your dying parent plant may be surrounded by lots of seedlings. If large enough, they can be moved elsewhere in the garden to avoid overcrowding, and smaller ones can be potted up for winter, either outside or somewhere frost-free depending on their hardiness.
For more permanence, I’d recommend sowing some hardy perennial seeds now too so you will ha
