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.

Annual flowers - single stocks and their seeds

I absolutely love stocks, although this isn't my favourite type. This one is
a pretty colour though

One of my absolute favourite flowers is an oldie but a goodie - the stock. The quintissential english cottage garden plant that smells divine. The way to my heart is through a bunch of these flowers, which is why I always try and grow my own. Because quite frankly they are over priced in the shops when you consider how easy they are to produce yourself. This year I tried a new variety in my garden, but results have been at best mixed.

So in my experience of growing stocks in the past you get one flower spike grow up, which if you're me you chop off for a vase indoors and then the plant is done. Quick but effective. But the ones I grew this year were great big branching things that I have to say lacked the elegance of stocks you buy in the supermarket. I may have got more actual flower but I prefer the straight-up-and-down of shop varieties. I presume what I grew is a single variety as the individual flowers are quite spaced out. I much prefer a nice dense flower head. But the colours were pretty as ever, and the smell divine.

Pretty and sweet smelling, what more do you need from a plant?

One thing I was not exactly thrilled about was the fact I got my plants in nice and early, they flowered - which is fine - and then they went straight to seed. A stock in seed is not an attractive beast. It grows long cylindrical seedpods which on mass resemble, to me at least, fronds or tenticles. I have no need of tenticles in my garden. I wasn't sure how to progress from this. Could the plants be cut right back, thereby removing the seeds and potentially producing more flowers? Or was this it? As I wanted to try collecting seeds I decided this was it and just left the pods, thinking they would ripen in a few weeks and I could pull out the plants.

This is not my cutting bed at its best but it shows the nature of my stock variety

Stock seed heads do not willingly go dry. My plants have had resolutely green ones for months. I was at the point of despair when randomly about six weeks ago the plants all suddenly re-burst into flower. I don't get how this is possible as they had all gone to seed. It doesn't really matter, the unexpected flowers were a welcome addition to my fading garden.

Not long after this on some of the plants, ones that had not chosen to randomly flower again, one or two of the pods had finally decided to dry. You know when a stock seed pod is ready when it suddenly desicates, goes brown and flat and very dry. Then you want to whip off the pod before it naturally splits and you lose all control over placement next year.

The unripe seed pods, green and plump and not exactly pretty

Im not sure if its better to save stock seeds in the pods over the winter, or store them free, but I decided to shuck my seeds. This is fairly fiddly as the pods are stiff and the seeds miniscule and very light, flying off in every direction under the force of prising the pods open. I shall not be surprised if I get stocks growing out of the middle of the living room carpet next year. Some I did manage to capture in an envelope, and some I most definitely threw away. I did not realise that the pods are divided into two chambers, if you will, with each being filled with a line of seeds, so after empyitng one I threw the other away on quite a few! Oops. Oh well I learnt in the end.

The dried out pods with the ripples showing they are full of seeds. The seeds are small, black and easily losable in the
carpet

I believe you can't guarantee what type of stock you will grow from a home collected seed. You may have had a double, but the seed produces singles, and vice versa. Im happy to try my luck not being overly enamoured with the parent plants. I will also look to supplement my own collection with another variety of the double, mono-headed variety so I get a bit of all worlds.
Overall I would say it hasn't been my favourite year of growing stocks, although they have contributed to the general ambiance in my cutting garden, but I have learnt a lot from these surpsisingly fragrant plants.

A border of summer annuals - July

My new annual flower bed, with cosmos, stocks, cornflowers and my first zinnia
of the season

You know what they say, one person's loss is another's gain.  In this case it is four bushes lost, a summer annuals border gain.  I have posted before about how we ripped out the front hedge consisting of four raggedy bushes and were left with a lovely big border just ripe for the planting.  I put in three wigwams of beans and a couple of lines of dwarf but this still left me with plenty of room for other things.  And if that wasn't enough the mother then decided to cut into the grass and expand the border to make something a little more pleasing on the eye.

One of my beautiful marbled antirrhinums, nestled in next to my runner beans 

If you are a long-time reader of my blog, you would be aware that since January I have in effect been running an annuals breeding programme.  On cold cold Saturdays I would be huddled in my garage, pushing seed after seed into compost, dreaming of a beautiful summer display.  As this started pre front border emptying I figured I would just find holes for all these annuals here and there amongst the established plants.  That plan would not have worked.  I probably have grown around sixty plants of various varieties, my supply of nooks and crannies is not that endless.  They would have been tucked away and hidden.

It really has the feeling of a proper cottage garden, with a mixture of vegetables and
proper old fashioned cottage garden flowers.  Here is glorious bright red runner
bean flowers with white stocks

But not now.  Now they have taken centre stage in my garden, in full view of the road and all my neighbours, and I think it looks rather good.  Plants I managed to get in fairly early are happily flowering away.  At the other end my beans are also in flower surrounded by more annuals and then I have just put in my last plants in between.  There are also around fifty gladiolus bulbs in this border, when it is all out it should really be a joy to behold.  The first two spikes of gladiolus have just shot up so I am expecting flowers very shortly.

My border is full of these lovely dark burgundy cornflowers

Why did I grow all my annuals in pots rather than just chucking the seed in where they are to grow? Not in my soil they don't!  Nothing but aquilegia grows from seed in my heavy clay soil.  The task is too hard.  They do much better if they can be allowed to get established and then I leave them to the mercy of the clay.  I have given each plant a little sand around them to help improve drainage, and they seem to like it enough.  The great thing about this bit of soil is that because it had large bushes in it with extensive root systems, the soil is not too compacted and digging a few inches down is comparatively easy.

I am thrilled with this zinnia, its just the most beautiful colour.  I have several varieties
so there should be a good mix

Among my varieties are cosmos, zinnias, cornflowers, antirrinum, scabious and stocks.  I did not deliberately co-ordinate the colours but they do actually all compliment each other.  I will be doing individual posts on each variety, saying what I think of it and close-up pictures, that kind of thing, but I wanted to show the border as a whole as it is at the moment.  It is pretty today, but I hope it will change and morph across the next month and look different but equally pretty in a months time.  I will share how it has changed over the next month at the end of August.