Keen to get into gardening, but don’t know where to start?
We as a pest control company in East London have put together a quick guide to 5 of the nation’s top garden plants. So if you want to introduce a little colour into your garden, read on…
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Pieris Mountain Fire
Mountain Fire is a slow-growing shrub that grows best in full sun or partial shade.
This bushy, medium-sized evergreen shrub has brilliant, glossy, red young leaves that mature to chestnut brown, and finally a deep green. The fiery red young foliage adds colour to a shady border or woodland edge, and in April and May clusters of pretty, ivory bell-like flowers bloom, a little like lily-of-the-valley.
Grows best in an acidic, moist, well-drained soil.
Fuchsia
Fuchsias are grown for their attractive, pendant-like flowers that bloom almost continuously from June to October.
This fast-growing shrub prefers to be in moist, well-drained soil, with shelter from cold, drying winds, and they like a little shelter in the middle of the day, making them an ideal flower for a shady border.
Bushy and upright, their showy scarlet and purple flowers look dramatic against their dark green foliage.
Delphinium
Delphiniums are a classic, cottage garden favorite plant. These hardy perennials love fertile, well-drained soil, and they look fabulous amongst shrubs towards the back of a sunny but sheltered border.
There are many different varieties of Delphinium, all of which grow in a magnificent towering spire and produce the most spectacular cut flowers you can grow.
The flowers come in a range of colours, most notably blues, mauves, pinks and whites, and they bloom throughout the summer months.
Geranium Johnson’s Blue
Hardy geraniums are indispensable for their colourful flowers and amenable growing patterns, and Geranium Johnson’s Blue is one of the best and most popular perennial geraniums available.
Johnson’s Blue grows to a height of c. 30cm, with lobed handsome leaves, and large, long-stalked flowers with dark-veined, lavender-blue petals.
Their foliage looks stunning in the springtime, while the flowers bloom throughout the summer.
They grow in most types of soil, love the sunshine although a little shade is tolerated, and they make lovely ground cover under roses or flowering shrubs and in front of a flower border.
If you cut them back in late summer, the foliage will bounce back during the autumn.
Buddleia
There are many species of buddleia, but one of the most popular in the UK is the Buddleia davidii ‘Nanho Blue’, commonly known as the butterfly bush.
This deciduous shrub loves fertile, well-drained soil in full sunlight, making it ideal for many spots in your garden.
The foliage looks good from spring through to the autumn, but the plant is at its most spectacular for six weeks in summer and autumn when it’s covered in long, heavy flowering heads with small light blue flowers. As their name suggests, they attract clouds of butterflies when in bloom.
Buddleia need regular, hard pruning in early spring to keep them within bounds.
There are many other varieties of flowers and shrubs you could plant to add a splash of colour in your garden, including roses, lavender, clematis and foxgloves. What you decide is a matter of personal taste and careful planning depending on the soil, shade and climate.
