Every year in May and June garden centres and various other outlets have a wide range of bedding plants on offer, giving many people the problem of not knowing which ones to purchase for beds, containers, hanging baskets and window boxes.
Nobody likes to spend money on bedding plants only for them not to reward the purchaser with a colour show all summer long.
In some years, certain plants do better than others. The excessive rain in the past month has meant that summer bedding schem
es have not looked their best.
Certain flowers have not fared well. The delicate and fleshy-stemmed impatiens, better known as busy lizzies, have suffered with the heavy showers of rain and it has been the same for petunias, the single-flowered ones especially have been badly hit, their floppy petals not being able to stand the deluge and many buds have rotted before they have had a chance to mature.
African Marigolds
However, there are many plants that have never looked back. Antirrhiniums and African Marigolds have stood up well but, of course, they are not yet in full bloom, being a little later than most to come into flower.
Geraniums and fuchsias are more robust in habit so they are doing well. Begonias, both the fibrous-rooted semperflorens types with their clusters of small blooms and the larger NonStop varieties, enjoy damp conditions.
Of course, with all flowers it has depended on where they have been planted and how much shelter containers and hanging baskets have had.
So what do we learn from a "summer" such as we are experiencing: the more delicate the flowers, the more they will suffer; the more robust specimens can stand up to a poor summer.
But what a season will be is something nobody can foretell and purchases are usually a matter of personal choice.
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