Old-fashioned cottage-style annuals
Words: Graham Rice
One of the striking features of this year's show is the number of exhibits featuring the old-fashioned annuals that we thought had all been replaced by dumpy little bedding plants. But this year at Hampton Court, they're back.
On the Copella Plant and Protect garden, designer Sadie May Stowell has used a range of seed raised plants but her groups of white-flowered annuals are especially delightful. Pure white poppies sit among the white flowered form of our native wild corn cockle, Agrostemma githago 'Ocean Pearl'. Speckled towards the centre of the flower, the corn cockle leans into Ammi majus, like a more elegant hedgerow cow parsley. White spotted foxgloves blend in beautifully.
These annuals were grown for the exhibit by Sadie's mother and while timing the plants to be at their best for the show is quite an art, in the garden they are easy to raise from seed sown direct in the soil in spring. Some gardeners mix their seeds to achieve this effect.
A little further along, old fashioned annuals are used in a slightly more formal way on the LOROS Hospice Garden of Light and Reflection. Vivid magenta pink Cosmos are fronted by bright orange calendulas to create a much more vibrant combination. This style of planting is more easily developed if the seeds are sown in pots, moved on individually into pots and planted out exactly where you want them to create the best effect.
Over on the Jekka's Herb Farm exhibit, a range of annual herbs curves around the back of the stand. The white lacy flowers of Ammi majus, whose seeds are used to treat vertigo, nestle amongst the blue flowers of borage, Borago officinalis. Used as a lively decoration in drinks, it's a neat little trick to freeze borage flowers in individual ice cubes for drinks.
Two types of clary enrich the planting. Annual Salvia viridis, whose blue, pink or white colouring comes from the leaves on the upper part of stems, is an excellent dried flower. The coloured leaves and flowers are attractive and bring a mild sage flavour to salads. Its biennial cousin Salvia sclarea is the true clary – the name is derived from "clear eye" which indicates its use as an eye treatment. Its large hooked, pale pinkish lilac and white flowers are impactful the year after the seed germinates.
Over in the Floral Marquee, Botanic Nursery have an attractive muddle of cottage style annuals and biennials at the end of their stand. Boldly marked foxglove Digitalis 'Pam's Choice' rubs shoulders with recently introduced red hollyhock Alcea 'Mars Magic' (Spotlight Series). A lovely but unjustly overlooked tobacco plant, Nicotiana mutabilis, with pink and white changing bells, helps knit it all together.
Low down, one very old and one very new annual sit together. Candytuft Iberis 'Dwarf Mixed', with its scabious-like heads in pastel shades and white, is one of the easiest and most rewarding of all annuals. Then in the very front is love-it-or-loathe-it Petunia 'Pretty Much Picasso'. In vivid pink with a green edge to petals, it divides the opinions of the visitors.
There are more old cottage style annuals to be found in other show gardens and on other exhibits. And not only are they truly beautiful plants but seed is inexpensive and they're easy to grow. You can't ask for more than that.