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There are many ways of decorating
your garden with winter plants, and if you want to have a
mass effect, go in for single-flowering beds, writes
Satish Narula
Winter plants,
flowers need plenty of sun
DO you buy good quality winter
annual seeds? You germinate and transplant these
according to the book. Yes. Do you get the desirable
results? No. Do you get back the worth you had bargained
for? No. The reasons? Improper and unplanned allocation
and placement.
In fact the winter plants
and flowers need plenty of sun. The days are short and
the period of illumination limited. High buildings,
neighbours tall-growing trees or the aspect of the
house etc are some of the factors responsible for shady
areas in a garden. Then, should you drop the idea of
growing flowering annuals? No. Even amongst the more
light-and-sun- demanding winter plants, there are some
that will brave this constraint, to some extent.
For the best results,
there are a few considerations, such as colour
combination, contrasts, height of the plant, shady,
semi-shade or sunny aspects and above all the place of
planting window-sill, a bed near the bedroom or
under a window.
There is a wide range of
flowering plants for winter. It is advisable to draw up a
plan for planting on a paper rather than going straight
for planting which you cannot alter later. Some
enthusiasts even fill colours in their plans to see the
kind of effect they would get later. A wise step. While
drawing a plan keep in mind the potential height of the
plant too.
Over a period of time the
gardeners have become quite conscious of the colour and
height concept, and thanks to the various flower seed
producing companies, one can get the desired material.
There are hybrids too. You can now ask for pink phlox,
white petunia, yellow verbena, blue allysum, blue salvia,
white aster, yellow, golden white or red marigold and so
on. This provides you with an opportunity to select site
according to the potential height of the plant, which is
mentioned on the wrapper and also a pre-planned colour
combination.
There are many ways of
decorating your garden with winter plants. If you want to
have a mass effect, go in for single-flowering beds. All
white, red, blue or yellow give a good mass effect. For
an arrangement of similar colours with various hues, you
can plan it by taking the colours on the periphery of the
bed and planting progressively darker colours as you move
towards the centre. This could be white, creamish yellow,
light yellow and finally deep yellow. Similarly, for all
red types, the arrangement could be light pink, deep
pink, light red, deep red and then crimson.
Now the other way round.
If you like to have a contrasting combination, then plan
red with green background or next to blue, violet and red
to set off yellow. To make things easy for you, for
yellow flowering plants select from amongst yellow
calaendula, yellow nasturtium, yellow marigold, verbena,
allysum etc. For blue there are corn flower, blue
larkspur, ageratum anchusa etc. For red linum, salvia,
phlox, and dahlia are available. As for height, refer to
the wrapper. But go in only for such specifications if
you are ready to shell out a little extra. Specific and
hybrid seeds cost high but the results are rewarding.
The width of the border
should not be less than one to 1.5 metres. For tall,
medium and dwarf plants the area allocation should be in
the ratio of 6:3:1.
That would mean in a
metre-wide bed, the border should be given 10 cm for
dwarf types in the front, 30 cm for medium types and 60
cm for tall types at the back. The approximate distance
from plant to plant should be 30-40 cm, 15 to 20 cm and
10 to 20 cm for medium and dwarf types, respectively.
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