The windowbox

 

Not a pretty sight

The windowbox is looking very sad.  It happens every year around this time; the winter display is past, but I don’t yet have enough of a summer display to replace it with.

The recent dry spell (with minimal watering by me), coupled with my forgetting to keep the violas dead-headed, has taken its toll on the planting.  The bulbs (snowdrops, which did well, and Narcissus ‘Tete-a-tete’, which didn’t make a great show) have now died back, and the little pulmonarias are rather faded; the violas (which did really quite well until recently, considering they were only self-seedlings scavenged from around the garden) are now petering out.  There’s a little rosemary plant but it’s so small it’s barely noticeable.  All in all, it’s not a pretty sight.

I try to resist buying bedding plants; they can be lovely, but growing them uses a lot of water and electricity, and ultimately they’re destined for the compost heap at the end of the season.  I much prefer using plants of my own raising, usually a mix of small shrubs and perennials grown from cuttings, like the rosemary, and some seed-grown annuals.  The cuttings are mostly for foliage and structure, while the annuals generally provide the flowers.  But because I don’t heat the greenhouse and start seed-sowing late, in mid-May the annuals are still tiny and not ready to be planted out.

Some of the aquilegias

As with the violas, there is the possibility of scouring the garden for material; however there isn’t much that’s suitable, ie the right sort of size with decent flowers in bloom now.  I have a lovely set of aquilegias, grown from seed collected from some of my best bicolours a couple of years back and bedded out in spare soil behind the raspberries; they are now in flower for the first time and look really good, but they’re much too tall for a windowbox.  Most are pink, purple or blue with white inners, but there’s a gorgeous tall near-black one which I’ve earmarked to keep.  Some will go in a more suitable place later in the year, while others will be potted up for next year’s village plant sale.  At the other end of the height scale, my little Geranium renardii, which I planted out at the edge of the old herb bed, are also now in flower, but I’m not minded to move them as they’re happiest where they are, in dry soil in sun.  There are plenty of doronicums, but they don’t always transplant well and will go out of flower before too long.

Geranium renardii

I do have a few annuals ready, sown last autumn, but not really suitable for a windowbox, either because they’re too tall (corncockle) or too leggy (the blue salvia, which I forgot to pinch out to keep bushy).  Of the spring sowings, I have some Cosmos ‘Xanthos’ coming along, but they haven’t germinated well (and were initially grazed off by slugs or snails) and are still too small to be of much use yet; other tinies are lobelia (still to be hardened off), echium and a second sowing of the blue salvias.  It will be several weeks before any of them make a good showing, let alone flower. 

So, cuttings: well, I have purple sage, which always makes a good statement, and likewise green sage, southernwood and some lavender; a few of those could be used but again, none of them are large and are likely to get a bit lost in a mixed planting.  Ditto the rosemary.  I do have the fuchsia which goes in every year, and eventually flowers nicely, so that’s a possibility.

The pink felicia

My best bet, I think, is the dreaded pink felicia.  The plant acting as a filler in the pot with Tulip ‘Doll’s Minuet’ has now come into flower, and would fit the bill.  The tulips are past and, as they’re not a variety to keep for another year, can be dug up and binned and the felicia repurposed, perhaps with some of the white osteospermum, of which I potted up some pieces in the autumn for filling out big pots.  The felicia's flowers are small and would make little impact, but they could be replaced in a few weeks time by annuals, once they’ve grown to flowering size.  I fear, though, that the windowbox won’t look very interesting for a while yet!