November gardening: tips for the perfect 'hot bed'

When you move to another country, you realise how much language can isolate and exclude. It is not just a foreign tongue though. Inadvertently, jargon and unfamiliar terms can intimidate and put people off engaging. 

When I first started writing cookery books 35 years ago, I realised I had to explain what to me were obvious culinary terms – I fear I have not been as aware in these gardening columns. 

This month I am talking about hot beds and, confusingly, in gardening that can mean two completely different things. 

A hot bed can be something you construct to propagate or bring on seedlings. The heat generated by decaying matter (manure or compost) under the seed bed boosts germination and growth. 

The other kind of hot bed or border is a flowerbed full of plants in a restricted palette of yellow, red and orange, in all shades thereof, giving an effect of the whole thing being on fire. It is very effective and you can have a lot of fun playing around with it. In France it is known as massif tout feu or tout flamme.

Growing bonfires

November is forever linked to bonfires in British minds and it is also a wonderful time to create a brand new hot border from scratch. You can plan for the fires to start straightaway, with each season taking up the torch into the next. Once you have done the ground work – cutting the bed, removing the weeds, adding some organic matter – think about plants. Put in some fiery tulips: there are a lot of reds and oranges which will fit the brief. 

Consider also orange crown imperials (fritillaria imperialis) which will stand, stately, above the tulips. You could edge the border with golden crocus. Whilst you are planting bulbs, think about adding lilies in all shades of orange. Fox Tail lilies (eremurus) are spectacular, their flower spikes are like a firework’s trail blazing upwards, but they are quite fussy and need good drainage. Once they establish though, they are pretty trouble free and may self-seed. 

You can buy the “crowns” from a bulb supplier or online – look for lis des steppes, which tells you where in the world they originated, meaning they do need a period of cold over winter to do well. 

Day Lilies (hemerocallis) are easy to grow and will give a procession of orange flambeaux, held on stiff stalks over fountains of strappy foliage, from May to July. Choose rich oranges and maroons rather than the bog standard peachy orange for more impact – H. Frans Hals, H. Mauna Loa or H. Fulva are all wonderful and the intensity of H. American Revolution and the aptly named H. Burning Daylight and H. Campfire Embers should not be missed. 

Daily deadheading would be a bonfire of your sanity but doing it occasionally will revive the overall colour effect. Big fat canna tubers can be planted now or leave it until next year. Pick the right variety and the big leaves in dark reds with yellow veining can add to your display. Year on year, my cannas seem to get taller, the red ones like a gas field flame flaring out above the bed.

Shrubs and roses can also be planted now and will give form and structure to your new bed. I really love orange roses and there are some which change in colour, cycling through from yellow, through to red as the flowers age. R. Tout Feu Tout Flamme (aka Chewpinup) is a polyanthus rose which will flower from April onwards with an open form that’s best for pollinators – it’s vigorous and resists black spot. 

Mine came, unnamed, from a supermarket. Specialists have more choice and right now can offer bare root roses. 

R. Valérie de Montgolfier looks fabulous and has the benefit of incredible scent too. Potentillas – the woody sort as opposed to the perennial – can provide a mass of sunset colours in late spring and then its bulk can be a foil for perennials later in the season. P. fruticosa Tangerine is a nice clear orange, P. fruticosa Red Ace gives more of a mix of fieriness.

Place perennials now between your shrubs, bulbs and roses – Heleniums, Helianthus, Rudbeckia, Echinacea and Arctotis are all magnificent daisy shaped perennials which come in fantastic fiery shades. 

The central bosses of the Heleniums look like medieval stump work and the ‘cones’ of Rudbeckia and Echinacea can look like coals. Geum Totally Tangerine was much used at RHS Chelsea. 

If you want more spire shapes there are flame colour Russel Hybrid Lupins or if you live, like me, where the climate is too hot or there are too many slugs and snails, try the amazing digiplexus – D. Firecracker or D.Illumination Flame. Digiplexus is a cross between digitalis purpurea (foxglove) and the Canary Island foxglove (isoplexis canariensis). It is not a biennial but a perennial and produces vividly coloured spikes of flowers. 

If you like plates of tiny flowers try Achilleas, like A. Walter Funcke and A. Terracotta. It offers good ground cover, with the dark green fern foliage knitting together and the tiny clustered flowers held up high. Asclepias tuberose, otherwise known as butterfly or milkweed, is a stalwart of my hot bed, coming back every single year for more than 15 years. It rubs shoulders with the bronze iris and the kniphofia (red hot pokers) without which the bed would not be complete.

Tips for next spring

Next spring add annuals like zinnias, tithonias, marigolds from tiny tagetes to big African ones and drop in smouldering deep maroon dahlias or Velvet Queen sunflowers when all risk of frost has passed. 

If you need even more height for your first summer, grow black-eyed Susan (thunbergia) up obelisks. 

Before you hang up your trowel this month though, buy a few bright orange Icelandic poppies, coppery violas and some bronze leaved polyanthus castilian as winter bedding to spark your hot bed into life. Then sit back and watch your hot bed glow.