The cut annual flower plot through the months

Orange zinnias and double click rose bonbons

As its now November and a deluge of water has pretty much finished off any remaining annuals in my front vegetable and cut flower garden hybrid, now seems like a good time to take a look back over the bed through the summer months. It has been a continuing thing of beauty, but each month it has looked different. First were the cornflowers, then the gladiolus, the cosmos, the beans and then the zinnias.

I started putting my annual plants in the bed in about June, although the gladiolus started to go in before that. I grow nothing in terms of annuals from scratch in situ. I just do not have the soil. My soil would make even the most robust, eager little annual seed give up with the heavy heavy clay. Although the front bed actually isn't too bad from years of bush roots tunnelling through.

Flowering kicked off in July with my cornflowers. Beautiful dark claret tufts waving around in the wind. Also bursting into action prolifically were my four varieties of beans in white, pale lilac and orange and these provided a lot of the colour at this time. A few cosmos had struggled out and my first zinnia.

Early August

At the beginning of August the antirhinnums were livening up the bed with their small mounds of bright colour. The first gladiolus made an appearance at this point too, a lovely pale coral one and unsurprisingly the first variety I planted. The bed was still to really get going, especially as the beans had moved into vegetable production by this point, but things were starting to look up.

Mid August

By mid August I had two different colours of gladiolus in bloom - the original coral one and fresh green star. The gladiolus definitely looked best when there was an assortment of colours out at once. My yellow zinnia was also brightening up one side of the beans.

After a wet few days

This was a bad day in the annual bed. We had the most torrential downpour of rain over several days and my upright straight as a dime gladiolus all flopped over and a bit of remedial staking was required.
By the end of August the gladiolus end of the bed was really starting to look pretty. There were the glads, cosmos, zinnias and cornflowers all vying for attention. I put the plants that had reached maturity earliest down that end as I was waiting for the beans to go in before planting up the other end.

Early September

Two of my favourite coloured plants appeared at the start of September and they complimented each other perfectly it turned out. The dark red glad was a winner with the neighbours and I just loved the zingy orange zinnias. They were a star of the bed right from this point onwards in my opinion.

Other than the orange zinnias the glads were the focal point of the bed. All the different colours started coming up together and totally ignoring my planting scheme, it was a riot of summer colour and this was the point people started stopping in the street. As long as they are not clutching a big pair of scissors thats fine with me!

This purple tobacco plant turned to be a pillar of the bed, complimenting the glads and the zinnias, but I actually didn't plant it. I don't know how it got in there, but once it started flowering, despite taking up half the bed I didn't have the heart to remove it.

A stray tobacco plant

It wasn't until early October that the double click bonbon cosmos plants down the other end of the bed really reached perfection and there was a seamless line of colour from one end to the other. Although it looks great with multiples of the same plant dotted around, there clearly is room for more varieties as I have planned next year.

I thought the bed looked really odd after the height of the beans was removed at the beginning of October. I liked all the colour against the backdrop of green. The early showers started to die at this point and I turned my attention to seed collection, which doesn't exactly improve the look, but oh well.

At the end of October the colour had begun to die off quite dramatically, but some heleniums and the antirhinnums were still flowering strong and keeping things interesting until last week when I imagine the colder nights finished most things off.

End of October

Now I am just left with a lot of dead plants to pull out to leave my vegetables. I have been gradually replacing the dying annuals with vegetable and salad plants so there shown be continuing greenery out the front through the winter and the soil wont go to waste.

Im really thrilled with how my annual bed turned out this year, especially as I hadn't planned it. Where I thought I was going to find the space to plant all my seedlings without digging up the front bushes I really don't know, but in the end they had their own dedicated area and it worked really well. Next year I hope to get a wider variety of colours and plants in and really make it something spectacular.

My week in sowing 9 - zinnia sprite and envy double

I feel like my sowing endeavours are beginning to draw to a close, my bag of seed compost is getting near being empty, and my list of things to sow is slowly running out.  I am now onto seeds I had last year and am re-sowing stuff that has either died or been eaten.  I imagine I will still be sowing the odd thing here and there as I decide I need even more annuals, but the back is most certainly broken.

Zinnia mixed sprite are nice compact flowers with tightly overlaid petals,
the colours are all very bright as well, sure to liven up a border

Zinnia - Mixed Sprite. I must now be on my fourth variety of zinnia.  I love these flowers and my big hope is that some of the resulting flowers set seed at the end of the year and I can grow some of my own as well.  Zinnia's are notorious for cross-pollination so you always end up with a weird hybrid if you grow from your own collection, but I think it would be fun to see what came up.  This is a very short variety, I have seen in growing in somebody else's garden and unlike all the other varieties I have sown the flowers do not have tall stems, or particularly big flowers either.  Really selling it here!  No it has nice qualities and will be a bonus to my stocks.  I sowed two seeds each in two pots because as I said before, soil is limited and I can no longer afford to pander to zinnia's fussy roots.

One of my few zinnia envy doubles from last year, I almost prefer them
when they are at this spiky stage as the petals slowly unfurl

Zinnia - Envy Double.  And another variety!  I have grown a few of these in the past and they are a real addition to a bunch of cut flowers.  Each bloom is completely green, so they contrast brilliantly with other bright flowers by providing a soothing green backdrop and fulfilling some of the role of foliage.  These do have nice long stems and considerable sized flowers.

Coreopsis x Hybrida - Incredible. This is my second batch of incredible.  Not because I love the flower so and therefore want hundreds.  Oh no.  Somebody ate the first lot.  All the seedlings were coming along very nicely and then one day I checked in on them, and nothing.  Nada, nowt.  The funny thing is, on the packet it says these were found growing out of concrete near the chenobyl nuclear disaster.  So it can survive a healthy dose of radiation and a thick crust, but not a slug.  So busy singing its praises was the packet, that it failed to mention being so damn tasty and in need of protection.  I had a little lip tremble on discovery, but I managed to keep it together and just get on with sowing another batch.

Poppy - Lilac Pompom.  This is one of those flowers that when I pulled it out of the bag I wondered why I had bought it.  Not that it doesn't look lovely but it does feel an odd choice to have made.  The joy of these are that they are annuals so I shall not think of them as poppys.  These will be big frilly lilac blooms.

Helenium - Autumn Sunshine. This is one of my packets of seeds from last year.  I have tried growing these before but sowed them too late so it didn't work out.  These are daisy type flowers, my favourite type.  I believe these will be a rusty red colour.