Girls named Primula or Pansy are an endangered species these days. A few Poppies, now and then, but in 25 years of book signings I've never come across a Pansy or a Primula (usually known as Prim) under 75.
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Most of the books I read as a child had been my grandmother's – there had been a publishing hiatus during World War Two and for a decade or so afterwards, but thankfully Grandma had kept most of hers, stirring tales about English gels flying seaplanes, time slipping to ancient Egypt via an Aunt's emerald ring or battling boa constrictors in between hi-jinks at boarding school. And at least half of the high spirited lassies seemed to be named Poppy, Pansy or Prim. Heroines, the lot of them.
As are poppies, pansies and primulas in winter. Camellias, grevilleas et al will be blooming brilliantly but if you want a complete wow! factor in any season you need annuals. Sorry about that. Just like an immaculate lawn, splendiferous flower borders need work.
Planted at exactly the right time, poppies, pansies and primulas will bloom all through winter and into spring too (depending on when the first truly hot and dry windy days hit).
What is the exactly right time to plant Iceland poppies, pansies and primulas? I wish I knew. I suspect it varies depending on the year's weather and general sunniness of your garden. Plant the seedlings too early and they turn spindly; plant them too late and they don't flower till spring … and will be spindly and fleeting then, too.
Planted at that exactly right time, your pansies, primulas and Iceland poppies willl be strong enough to begin to flower in early winter. Feed twice weekly, weakly – a little and often is the best rule with annuals. Give them a foliar feed with a seaweed-based fertiliser, if you really want to pamper them – and have them pamper you with a plenitude of blooms. As soon as the weather begins to warm up, mulch well and keep feeding, and prune off the spent blooms too. But don't mulch them now – you want to get as much warmth in the soil around them as you can.
You can plant the three of them, or just one. My preference is for one – a mass of Iceland poppies, a mob of delicate primulas, a carpet of flagrant pansies. All of them are magnificent in big pots too, in a sunny spot on the patio. In warmer climates they'll accept dappled shade. As a general rule, the colder your weather, the more sun they need. In a valley like ours, there's no choice – sun is severely rationed, especially in winter. But they keep blooming, if not with the glorious flamboyance of those with the gift of long sunny winter days.
To be honest, I won't be planting poppies, pansies or primulas this year. Our camellias have finally become small trees rather than bushes and should give us colour enough; the nerines have multiplied; and my left knee is feeling temporarily decrepit and does not like kneeling on cold soil.
But that is the gift of forty decades of gardening. There comes a time when you can have a break … and the garden will keep giving to you. But I will still dream that next year I'll be planting lots of those winter heroines – poppies, pansies and primulas.
This week I am:
- watching the buds on the camellias swell – hopefully all this rain means there will be thousands of giant flowers, but if they swell too much they will be too heavy for their stems, and drop off. I'm betting on the 'brilliant display' though, not the blossom drop;
- still not planting the veg seedlings that are getting taller and taller still … next week, maybe;
- picking Tahitian limes and avocadoes and finger limes and masses and masses of rhubarb and nothing like enough raspberries, because one can never ever have too many just-picked, sun-warmed, home- grown raspberries;
- being ignored by wombats – now they have all the grass they need they have no interest in carrots, nor the one who provides them;
- thanking Bryan for pruning back the elderberries, which become entirely too over-excited by a wet summer and the pruning will hopefully make them bushier, not lanky – and next year I may even have time to make elderberry cordial again; and
- enjoying the autumn roses, a new flush in the warm spell. There's a magic in the last rose of summer. It's even more magic when roses decide to keep blooming, just a few flowers per bush all winter long.
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