Golden Acres Blog

It’s amazing how much things can change in a week... We have now got all of our spring flowering bulbs in and I am as usual finding it hard to resist going nuts with them! I have bought some alliums to go in our new borders in the back garden and some miniature ‘pipit’ daffodils for our little patch at the front. I’ll also use some of these in my autumn planted containers so that when they emerge in the spring I’ll get a different and more spring like look.

Along with the bulbs we now have our autumn and winter bedding plants in. Its worth getting these plants in now so that they have plenty of time to establish before the cold weather sets in – I always find they’ll flower much more reliably if planted good and early.

So what to put in my pots for the autumn and winter? We have a lovely selection of young foliage plants with different leave shapes and colours to add interest so I’ll use some of these for structure. I’ll then pop in some of my favourite Violas and some Cyclamen for colour – Over the winter I’ll ensure that I feed the pots regularly with a tomato food, this keeps the plants flowering and the growth nice and hard helping them to cope with the coldest winter days. Drainage is essential in winter planted containers, if the plants get too wet they’ll really suffer. I find it’s worth spending a bit extra on decent compost specifically for containers so that all my efforts aren’t wasted!