The Flower Border Style And Framed Garden

Annuals and biennials

The jungle effects created by the free-style planting of woody plants, hardy perennials and bulbs are further enriched by biennials and annuals that are encouraged to seed themselves in haphazard groups and drifts to colonize any patch of bare soil. The crafty gardener may well direct events by scattering seed (never using a hoe or hand-cultivator) in available spaces.

In spring, biennial honesties (forms of Lunaria annua — known as the silver dollar plant in North America) will thrive and spread in the dappled shade of a fruit tree or ornamental cherry. Its mauve flowers make a striking color contrast to the pale yellow bracts of the almost evergreen perennial spur uphorbia amygdaloides robbiae, or the smaller . cypar sias, both of which spread in similar sites. A white-flowered honesty (Lunaria annua alba) may flower at the back of beds where shade-loving perennials take over later in the season and if isolated comes true from seed.

Biennial forget-me-nots (forms of Myosotis sylvatica) may be allowed to seed freely after flowering each spring and will happily multiply in any shady corner. Plants can be pulled up after flowering is over. Brighter blue flowers and sturdier plants are obtained in named seed packets; they should be sown in early summer and transferred to their flowering sites by autumn.

Biennial foxgloves, for sun and shade, are excellent in an informal garden. The ordinary Digitalis purpurea has a dingy pink flower, but white-flowering seedlings, as at Knightshayes Court, may be selected to add grace and interest to a border. The southern European D. ferruginea, with coppery-yellow flowers, looks exotic but is not too glamorous for the natural garden. Although a perennial, it is best treated as a biennial.

In open situations statuesque angelicas, evening primroses, tall silvery thistles (forms of onopordum), silybums with green leaves veined with white, and thistle-flowered Miss Willmott's ghost are all worthwhile biennials that mix well with groups of permanent shrubs and perennials; all are species and come true from seed.

The floppy horned poppy (Glaucium flavum) with greyish foliage and bright yellow papery flowers will sprawl at the front of a sunny border. Some of the biennial mulleins seed as single specimens between groups of perennials. They provide height, while prolifically seeding violas and verbenas carpet the ground, filling up space at the front of borders.