Ade Sellars delves into the dreaded period when perennials start to fade and bare patches appear, to show you how to overcome it with panache
Agarden filled with everlasting blooms is what all gardeners dream of. We work so hard throughout the autumn and winter months to ensure our early season displays are at their best, that we don’t always take into account the moment when spring passes the baton onto summer.
This point is a stop gap where flowers can fade, bare patches in beds appear and green seems the only colour on the garden palette. For bees and pollinators, the lack of pollen and nectar can be a real problem, as they struggle to feed themselves and provide for their colonies and hives. However, with a little forward planning you can guarantee to fill the June gap with colour and keep garden wildlife happy and well fed.
Here are 10 glorious plants you can sow, grow and purchase to fill the June gap.
1 Poppies
Sowing annuals is a great way to get a lot of flowers for only a few pence. They look great in flower borders, on their own in large swathes, or used as part of a wildflower scheme. Nurturing pollinators as they reveal their blooms, sowing poppies is so easy. For displays from March onwards, the sowing area should be weeded and raked to a fine tilth the previous autumn. Moisten the soil, then finely scatter seeds onto the soil surface. Mark the sown area, and as seedlings emerge thinning may be required. Seeds can also be sown in a seed tray and overwintered in a greenhouse, then planted out the following spring where gaps appear.
2 Osteospermum
A perennial, but many gardeners treat this unfussy African daisy as an annual. It is a versatile plant that comes in an array of colours, and looks wonderful at the front of borders, alongside paths, or grown in pots and containers. They prefer being planted in a sunny position with well-drained soil, but a weekly plant feed will provide further blooms right into autumn.
3 Campanula
Apart from full shade, this plant, also known as the bellflower, will grow in most areas. It’s a perennial that has bushy, tall, evergreen and deciduous varieties. To create further plants, either lift and divide the clump every few years or grow them from seed in trays from late winter onwards.
4 Echium pininana
Also known as tower of jewels, this biennial RHS Award of Garden Merit is a beacon for bees and hoverflies.
Reaching the dizzy height of more than 4.5m if grown in free-draining soil, its conical spiral is a mass of tiny white or blue flowers. Producing a large foliage rosette in its first year, this sun-loving pl
