One of the loveliest and shortest lived flowers in my garden are the Poppies, both perennial and annual. So no 30 in the 'Flowering in my garden' series is the perfect Poppy!
The first to show in the spring are the perennials or Papaver Orientalis, with the vibrant orange being the first splash of colour mid spring (often before much else is out which is lucky because it clashes with or overpowers most things)
The dusty centres are gorgeous!
Then the plummy purples and paler pinks
...with fabulous blotching and veining (this is 'Patty's Plum')
The furriest buds...
...packed with the paperiest crumpled petals (this is 'Cedric Morris').
The flowers are all gone now (each flower only lasts a day or so) and the plants flop everywhere now so they need cutting back. Then a whole new set of fresher and more manageable leaves will reappear.
Now it's the turn of the annual Opium Poppies or Papaver Sonmiferum...
which are generally more subtle and delicate...
...but just as beautiful.
The annual poppies have prettier foliage, with droopy buds...
and stunning seed heads.
So these should not be cut back when they have finished flowering but are left to seed for next year - which they do without any need for encouragement! The only down side is that the seedlings are very popular with slugs and snails so you have to keep an eye out or you can lose your poppies overnight!
The seed heads are also lovely dried and look great as part of Christmas arrangements and wreaths (now that's thinking ahead!)
I'm waiting for my Welsh Poppies, or Meconopsis cambrica, a dainty yellow flowered annual that introduced itself to my garden and turns up every year (often in very much the wrong place!) but which should look lovely in my new bottom bed full of blue, yellow and white flowers.
The last Poppy which I had hoped to share with you are Californian Poppies or Eschscholzia canifornica, a lovely bright orange perennial poppy that I grew from seed this spring.
This is what they look like 4 months on!
Now they are indeed alive, but growing so slowly that I may well lose the will to live before they actually flower ( I added some slug pellets purely for scale obviously!). They say gardening requires patience but really..?
Oh well, perhaps they will be something to look forward to next year, if I can get them through the winter!
And then this morning this appeared, no idea where from and it really doesn't 'go' in my purples and whites bed, but isn't it gorgeous!
and stunning seed heads.
So these should not be cut back when they have finished flowering but are left to seed for next year - which they do without any need for encouragement! The only down side is that the seedlings are very popular with slugs and snails so you have to keep an eye out or you can lose your poppies overnight!
The seed heads are also lovely dried and look great as part of Christmas arrangements and wreaths (now that's thinking ahead!)
I'm waiting for my Welsh Poppies, or Meconopsis cambrica, a dainty yellow flowered annual that introduced itself to my garden and turns up every year (often in very much the wrong place!) but which should look lovely in my new bottom bed full of blue, yellow and white flowers.
The last Poppy which I had hoped to share with you are Californian Poppies or Eschscholzia canifornica, a lovely bright orange perennial poppy that I grew from seed this spring.
This is what they look like 4 months on!
Now they are indeed alive, but growing so slowly that I may well lose the will to live before they actually flower ( I added some slug pellets purely for scale obviously!). They say gardening requires patience but really..?
Oh well, perhaps they will be something to look forward to next year, if I can get them through the winter!
And then this morning this appeared, no idea where from and it really doesn't 'go' in my purples and whites bed, but isn't it gorgeous!
No comments:
Post a Comment