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| A plain yellow one, I was virtually laying on the ground to take this |
Snapdragons, or antirrhinum to give them their proper name, are the quintessential cottage garden plant. So english, so very english. But so passed me by until now. Before growing them I knew of their existence, but genuinely don't think I could have identified one, or even remember seeing one before. But I knew the name, so during the great seed splurge of last year I threw a packet in and gave them a go.
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| Yellow with just the odd splattering of pink, very dainty |
From memory I would say the seedlings took forever to get going, but overall I think the seed to plant growing experience was fairly straight-forward. They were really really tiny for ages so I was a bit afraid to move them outside. In hindsight I think they could have gone out earlier, I was just being overprotective. I put the seedlings outside at the beginning of April and started planting them out into the bed at the beginning of May. Flowers first appeared some time in June.
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This one looks like it has been caught in quite the spray of pink, but its very
attractive |
I really love one element of snapdragons, and dislike another. First the dislike - they are so squat! Not great for adding height to the border thats for sure. Maybe its just my variety but they haven't grown taller than ten inches maximum and all the flowers stalks are very tightly packed together. They sit there small and unassuming amongst much more statuesque plants. I guess you need low colour, but they have such short stems for cutting!
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This one is just the most beautiful colour, not quite sure how it ended up
in a packet of so-called marbled ones |
Anyways this is completely offset by the colour. Oh the colour! So bright and fun, I was going to say there is nothing subtle about the colour, but actually some of mine have very sophisticated gradiations of colour. But some are just unashamedly fun. I bought a marbled mix - Bizarre Hybrids, so the colours tend to have one strong base colour - generally yellow which is flexed with various amounts of pink. Think child splatter paintings or those marbled papers you can make by putting paint in water and placing paper on it. Maybe they just appeal to me because of my art background. I love a good mess, but I also love a bright zingy yellow, and these are zingy. I also have a few more sophisticated ones, such as a orange-purple one thats really beautiful and a lovely dark pinky-red. I think the colours definitely make up for the squatty structure, they are some of the prettiest coloured flowers I can think of.
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| And shock it to you pink, although only the one head |
I also saw some on a visit to a nearby National Trust property and the colours were fabulous. A really intense red and the most beautiful peachy-pink shades. Definitely feeling the need to branch out and get some more colours. After all they don't take up much room being pigmy plants, and can be cut back when the flower spikes finish to flower again. I can work with the awkwardness as a cut flower for some of that colour.
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Really like the red one on the left, but love love love this flame coloured one
on the right |
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This one looks like a nice fruit salad, which is a sweet, might just be an english
thing, in which case google it |
The mother can manipulate the flower heads so that they move. She calls them bunny ears, because when you press a certain part 'bunny ears' move. Can I get it to work? No. Doesn't matter how I grapple with them, I just can't get it to work. Not that you're meant to get physical with flowers, but I keep trying.
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| A little line up of suspects, showing the colour variations |
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