I’m a great fan of using annuals for fillers in the garden. Quick growing flowers are ideal for filling in gaps between shrubs and perennials whilst you’re waiting for them to bulk up and fill the space – and for every place you plant an annual a weed cannot grow!
Throughout the growing season I plant a range of annuals to fill the spaces and to give colour at different times of the years, from Pansies in the spring to the flower-of-the-moment Strawflower.
I adore Strawflower, from the colour variations to the touch of the flowers to the sound the flower makes – giving it the name Strawflower.
Easily grown from seed sowing this Spring the plants now are around 3’ high and full of flowers, and these flowers will be gorgeous as a cut flower and for drying later in the year.
Now, while it’s too late for sowing these gorgeous Strawflowers in your garden for this year you can be thinking ahead for next spring and sow some Wallflower, Hollyhock and Sweet William seeds for colour in the garden next Spring.
These seeds, sown now, will germinate easily, and then you can pot them on and when larger plant them out in the garden.
Over the winter they will sit all compact and stiff and then in the Spring they will bound in growth and produce some cracking flowers next spring… ideal as cut flowers or if left alone, they will self-seed and reappear each year in the garden.
Remember all though you can argue that annual flowers are short-lived they provide a welcome splash of colour in the garden and where they grow a weed doesn’t!
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