If you are a fairly new gardener, you may not have heard the term biennial as much as annual and perennial. Those categorisations are well understood. Either you sow the seed or buy bedding plants for things which will flower this year (annual) or you invest (time or money) in a more expensive plant which will come back every year (perennial).
Biennials are plants which flower the year after they are sown. You plant seeds or small plants and then the following year they flower and then die. This may sound off-putting in a world of instant gratification: a lot of work and waiting and then it’s over. However, biennials can be easy and once a rhythm is established there is no problem having a yearly show of the plants you love.
The first year we were here, pre-Brexit, I planted bare-root wallflower plants, brought from the UK, down the drive. That was 18 years ago. They are still here. Or rather, their descendants are. Every spring I have a mass of deep maroon, highly scented flowers, interspersed with the daffodils, iris and muscari (grape hyacinth). As the flowers fade, I leave them to set seed.
Around them the coreopsis and clipped lavender grows up, covering the wallflower’s foliage. By July the seeds have ripened. I snip off the often split and twisted pods and ensure that any remaining seeds in them are scattered evenly along the bed. The only other thing I do is thin and transplant any overcrowded plants in late November or December. The rest I leave to nature.
You can do the same thing with foxgloves. When I began, I made a seed bed. It was just a slightly shady corner of the vegetable patch. I scattered a packet of Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’ over lightly raked soil, watered it and left it.
Eventually, little plantlets peppered the surface, small rosettes of soft green leaves. I left them until November and then transplanted them into the white border. These days, I no longer bother with the seed bed. When the stately spires start to fade, I cut off all but the back row. Those I leave for the seeds to ripen – if I am lucky, the others might give me a small flush of flowering spikes.
When the seed capsules are papery, usually in July, I cut the spikes and, like a Catholic priest waving a censer, I “anoint” the bed with a cascade of fine seeds. Again, nature does the rest. Forget-me-nots can be spread in the same way earlier in the season.
Eye-catching foxglovesSarah Beattie
When my cousin and his wife took us to view the house they eventually bought, the whole cour (farmyard) was literally covered in hollyhocks. It looked like a Klimt painting come to life. Magnificent as they were, they were not practical for parking cars or delivery vans.
A few remain in the new borders, descendants of the original ones. If you happen to see a hollyhock you particularly admire – for me that’s often the very darkest, almost black ones – buy it and plant it. Enjoy it for that season.
Cut off all the flower spikes as they fade but leave the bottom two round ‘buttons’ at the base of each spike. Allow these to ripen and when brown and papery, you can open them up and scatter all the disc-like seeds. Hollyhocks grow well in poor soils, like in a gravel garden (or an abandoned farmyard).
I was given what was called Julienne de Mahon at a plant swap once. That is a pretty annual – known in the UK as Virginia stock, Malcolmia maritima. It has pink, purple or white flowers and, like wallflowers, it is a member of the brassica family.
Actually the plant was Dame’s Rocket, Hesperis matronalis, from the same family but, like the wallflowers, a biennial. I do nothing at all to cultivate this beautiful addition to the late spring borders except pull out the old plants once they’ve dropped their seeds.
As long as you don’t inadvertently weed out next year’s seedlings, you are pretty much guaranteed flowers for life. Take time to remember what your biennial plants look like – leaf colour, shape, texture, etc. – to avoid doing this.
Hesperis
in full bloomSarah Beattie
Another lovely cottage garden plant, like Hesperis, is Honesty (Lunaria annua). It’s known in France as Monnaie du Pape (Pope’s Money), which references the large penny-shaped seed pods which follow the purple flowers. Confusingly for many gardeners, it’s called Annual Honesty but it is a biennial. Leave all the flowers to turn into the translucent, silvery ‘pennies’ and you will get a succession of plants.
Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) has the French name œillet which is given to marigolds (œillet d’Inde), carnations (œillet des fleuristes), silene (œillet de dieu), gypsophila (œillet des roches) and armeria (œillet marin).
Sweet William is œillet de poète. I am fussier with Sweet Williams and tend to sow them in small pots in June and July, keeping them out of direct sun and ensuring they are regularly watered. They are planted out in late autumn or early spring.
The biennials I love for my winter pots – which look good right through the spring – are the fabulous Icelandic poppies. I have been buying them from a local nursery each November, but this year I have decided to try sowing my own this month. Papaver nudicaule are not easy to germinate or grow on as they are prone to damping off but if I fail, there is always the nursery as back-up!
