Centaurea cyanus
cornflower
Piercing, bright blue flowers with ruffled petals and violet-blue centres appear from early to late summer among lance-shaped, mid-green leaves. Once...
GOES WELL WITH
How to make a new lawn

There’s nothing like a lawn to bring the various elements of a garden together as it’s easy on the eye and helps highlight other more ornamental features. Best of all, it adds much needed space to the garden and provides evergreen continuity too. But a la
Read full articleSow annuals in pots
If you have redundant space in your heated greenhouse why not try sowing a few flowering annuals such as cornflowers, calendulas, godesia and nemesia for pots of colourful blooms next spring? Sow in trays of compost and prick out seedling when large en
Read full articleThin out hardy annuals
Hardy annuals such as candytuft, California poppy and cornflowers sown direct last month into a prepared seedbed [link to making a seedbed] will need thinning to the correct spacing. Thin the flower seedlings when they are large enough to separate so the
Read full articleGet more flowers
Deadheading will prevent them setting seed and so use their energy producing a further flush of blooms later on. Plants that respond well to deadheading include annuals such as Ageratum, Alyssum, Antirrhinum, Calendula, Centaurea, Cosmos, Dahlia, foxglove
Read full articleFloral gastronomy
I used to be a bit sceptical about all this new-fangled fashion for eating flowers. All a bit Guardianista, I thought. Looks nice and all that, but what about the flavour? Well. Then I ate a rosemary flower. And found out about the flavour, and why people
Read full articlePlants birds love in the winter garden
As frost descends and the leaves gather on the lawn, the most important colour is red because it glows against the backdrop of fading stems in muddy shades of khaki, grey and brown. Red’s the colour that fixes the rest of the palette and luckily red berri
Read full articleHalf hardy annuals better sown in trays
If you are wanting to have a go at growing seeds then the easiest of all are the annuals because they are programmed to germinate, flower and set seed within one year - therefore they pop up easily because there’s no time to waste. Most will provide necta
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