flowers for winter

blushingbride_3

Hi

I am after some flowers to add colour to my garden.
what can i plant now for winter flowers?
i have space in the front garden.

Where can i get some nice big heavy pots? they need to be heavy/big so noone will steal them from my garden!lol

also where is the best place to buy hyasinths to grow inside? what about glasses to grow them in? & can i buy them ready to flower or do i have to put them in the dark?

:T

dexyblue

I plant winter pansies in mine, lovely colours and survive all weathers thats thrown at them

Mortal

have a look at your local supermarket for cheap plants.
You could plant up a couple of pots with some bricks in the bottom for drainage/weight. Perhaps layer with different bulbs for succession, and top off with some winter bedding. Go for something like viola rather than pansies as they stand up to the good old wet British winters.

For hyacinths inside, you're better off going to your local nursery and buying prepared bulbs which have been treated to flower early inside.

elephant-astic

blushingbride wrote: »

Hi

I am after some flowers to add colour to my garden.
what can i plant now for winter flowers?
i have space in the front garden.

Where can i get some nice big heavy pots? they need to be heavy/big so noone will steal them from my garden!lol

also where is the best place to buy hyasinths to grow inside? what about glasses to grow them in? & can i buy them ready to flower or do i have to put them in the dark?

:T

For jars for hyacinths it depends how posh you want to go, in theory an old jam jar would do the trick, so long as the bulb is held above the water level in the jar, but you can get special fancy looking glass jars for bulbs, which are shaped to hold the bulb in place securely, and look fairly ornamental in their own right.
Garden centres or supermarkets are probably your best bet for that sort of thing. In theory, the staff should also be able to give you advice about winter flowers which would be suitable for your garden's lighting and soil type too.

blushingbride_3

i got some hyacinths in 99p shop

Jake'sGran

I have had two cyclamen plants in full flower. Last week I put one outside as it was starting to get that shiny deposit on it - think it is the start of greenfly or something similar. Last week I noticed in Morrisons they had Winter hanging baskets containing cyclamen. By the way, our cyclamen was retrieved from next doors green bin after they went to work.

They have some really strange ideas about plants. Everything has to be round, even a Forsythia which is now a massive ball and in the Spring it just has the odd flower here and there. It could be a real picture!

Davey2009

Yes my other 1/2 bought me 5 Hyacinth bulbs from Poundland.

Polyanthas flower better in my garden throughout the winter months Ive had winter flowering pansies before & they haven't - just remember to pinch of the dead heads once flowered or all their energies go into making seed & not the flowers.

RAS

I think violas are beter than pansies as they flower more freely?

Mortal

RAS - I agree, and they flower for longer and stand up to the Great British weather better too

dogstarheaven

hi

i've recently bought 1/2 price outdoor terracotta pots from my local garden centre. this i found to be a great purchase as i don't normally buy them due to their high cost. these were normally in the £20 range so i was able to bag a few and these would stand out in my back garden. i'm in a not-well-to-do area, so i woulndn't dare have them out the front (i've had thefts before) tho' if you prefer you can always chain them up like you sometimes see at some posh restaurants, or put a big stake (or something like that) in the ground and put the draining hole of the pot over it.

plants to suggest are pansies and violas. they're both v visually stunning tho' i prefer the smaller ones as they're cuter looking, but the pansy type is more noticable tho'. these flower constantly, i mean for months on end. all you have to do is be vigilant and dead-head these all the time. i have cyclamen too that behave the same way too. i'd suggest inter-plant with spring bulbs, i've got a lot of mine from garden centres at around £2 per pack of 10 (taylors is a cheap and decent brand). wilko's gardening stock has finished now but their range was good for the basic bulbs.

pm me if you'd like more suggs if you wish
:j

guineagirly

Check out Aldi at the moment - they had some winter basket collections in stock last week that were reduced - pansies/violas/ivy/cyclamen/polyanthus etc. They were arranged in trays and looked pretty healthy.

These all get leggy by spring though and normally need to be chucked. Why not think about a longer term investment for winter colour such as hellebores and sedums. The hellebores produce loads of seedlings each spiring which can be moved to other areas of the garden and sedums are so easy to look after and can be split really simply in the spring. There are also lots of small shrubs that have lovely red leaves in winter that would happily grow in a pot.

Hope that'e of some use! Good luck!