So, how do you grow flowers?

[AkionTotocha]

Basically, I'm actually terrible at growing flowers. The only thing I have success with are dandelions and large bushes with tiny flowers.

Thankfully we inherited a garden with a large camellia bush (though there seem to be less flowers each year) the soil is in good condition (very soft, lots of worms, heavy clay soil improved using no-dig method adding MPC or bark chippings each year). The family want the kind of bushy bright borders filled only with flowers.. or at least not mud, currants, gladioli and weeds.

Unfortunately I'm completely stumped, and not entirely convinced I need to spend £300/year to fill three small borders with colour (Though maybe I'm wrong?)

So how do YOU grow flowers? Buy lots of annuals at BnQ? Plug plants and grow them out? Seeds? Perannuals? Bulbs? Biannuals??

~Confused and afraid

[Thelma Sanders]

Have you had success with growing vegetables from seed?

You could make a start on a flower border by growing some easy perennials from seed, lupins, centranthus, hardy geraniums, foxgloves, aquilegias, aubretia, eryngiums....loads in fact. It's how I've filled most of my garden, plus a few annuals that I grow each year.

You could start with a mixed pack to begin with, such as this Mixed Perennials Seeds from Mr Fothergill's Seeds and Plants

[veggiechicken]

Plant lots of bulbs to start - especially spring ones like daffs and tulips. They'll come up every year and die back in time for the summer flowers to take over.
Camellias like acid-ish soil so may not be happy in yours?
As Thelma suggests, grab some packets of mixed seeds - perennials and annuals - cheer and cheerful and scatter them. Marigolds, poppies, cornflower, nasturtiums. Easy to grow and will seed themslevs for next year!

[AkionTotocha]

There are a fair amount of inherited bulbs; crocosmia? daffs, snowdrops and gladioli. I got a box of 12 pre-grown tulips ready to go in a pot on the decking. But outside of the daffodils, most of the bulbs just make lots and lots of leaves (The crocosmia patch is 1.5ft x 1ft but makes about 10-15 sticks of flowers if I'm lucky. All the tops of the bulbs are showing - do I cover them?) and the daffodils only made leaves for the first 4 years until last year I got annoyed with them and tried to dig them out, found out they were buried at least a spade's depth deep, so I replanted them higher up and now they're flowering like troopers!

But the soil is also strangely acidic, I did tests last year and the garden doesn't get higher than 5.5, my blueberries are planted straight in the soil and loving it.

Thelma, I can grow tomatoes but I've not really bothered with other vegetables. Threw some kale seeds in a pot and got a lunch out of them, but when I went on holiday I came back to stumps and shiny pathways

And some runnerbeans got very long, but didn't give a single pod. I'm actually quite terrible it seems.

So I have seeds of a few things and tried, I planted some in pots and they were fine for a while but took a while to get big enough to plant outside and then the summer was over. I had some poppy seeds and sprinkled them on the ground but nothing happened.

[Zelenina]

I was thinking it must be acid soil if a camellia will grow there. So you'll do best with other acid loving flowers. These include rhododendrons and azaleas, begonias, heathers, and if you plant hydrangeas they'll turn bright blue instead of the more usual pink. Foxgloves like acid too and there's a nice variety of colours available now. Also zinnias which are very bright and colourful and easily grown from seed.

The inherited bulbs might be producing only leaves because they have multiplied and got too crowded. Probably a good idea to dig them up and spread them around a bit.