Summer planning
If you feel guilty for abandoning your gardening duties, salve your conscience by taking a stack of catalogues on holiday. The time to order spring bulbs is almost upon us and early-flowering varieties do best if planted in early autumn or even late summer. The same applies to autumn-planted garlic. Suppliers won’t post them out until they’re ready but planning and dreaming now with the best selection available leads to a great display in a few short months. Subscribe for just £4.50 a month! Go to www.greatmagazines.co.uk/gn And with everything on show, it’s desirable to make the view as nice as possible. When clustering containers for an a ractive display, put the pre y, smart-looking ones at the front thus distracting from ta y plastic pots at the back. As everything gets lavish and lush, I’m taking this a step further and bringing my indoor pots outside in pursuit of lifestyle glory. But since this is Britain and I only have to blink and it will rain, and since they have no drainage, I'm going to use them in the greenhouse. Fi ingly, the cover-pots I chose (from www. scheurich.co.uk) are named to evoke a warm summer vacation: the mosaics of Malaga, Almeria and Granada, and nice, tropical leaf pa erns too.
When I was at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival recently, I bought a couple of interesting chillies, ‘Filius Blue’ and ‘Adorno’. These are po ed up and looking great and there’s now space on the adjacent paving to sit and admire them, so I reckon it’s time to declare summer open!