Spring is such a wonderful time of year when the garden wakes up, bursting into life and feeding our souls with all we have been missing – flowers!
Spring flowers draw us outside, entice us to pull on the gardening gloves and get growing.
What are the best flowers to plant for spring?
Primed and timed
Gardening is all about planning, and if you have done well, spring brings bulbs into the garden. Tulips, Daffodils, and their fragrant cousins, jonquils, are some of the most reliable and easy to grow. They all like good drainage, as wet soil will cause them to rot.
Nutrition is key
No matter what flowers you are growing, remember they will need some extra nutrition at this time of year to maximise their size, fragrance, and colour. Liquid feeds work best as they are fast-acting and most can be applied every 10-14 days. Look for a flower-specific one, as this will have the right balance of nutrients to get the best out of your flowers.
Perfect peonies
If you are in a cool climate zone of Australia, you simply must grow Peony. It is my favorite flower, and every year I yearn to be in a cool climate so I can grow them. They require full sun, a fertile, rich, organic matter-rich soil, and will benefit greatly from a couple of big handfuls of lime to sweeten the earth and get the best out of them.
Flowering trees
There are some great small options – ornamental cherries, forest pansy, and, top of the list, magnolia soulangiana varieties, all look beautiful at the beginning of spring. Magnolia shows off its flowers on bare branches in white, pink, soft yellow, and deep purple, and any of these colours is sure to make you stop in your tracks and take it all in for a minute.
Native beauty
Billy Buttons add a wonderful playfulness to the spring garden with their small, rounded yellow flower heads. I think they look best when planted in a large group as the mass of flowers sits above soft silver foliage. They need lots of sun, free-draining soil, but some additional watering if really dry.
Catch Charlie on Better Homes and Gardens Fri. 7pm on Channel 7, and in Better Homes and Gardens magazine every month.
