what to plant now for a spectacular 2025

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Gardeners need a two-way mirror. They have to look sideways and forwards at the same time. September is a two-way month. In it I am enjoying the view sideways, but I will alert you to the view ahead.

Here is my sideways view of the moment. A red admiral has just landed on one of my blue Michaelmas daisies and moved on to a freely flowering helenium daisy further down the border. The helenium is the tall Riverton Beauty, which I much recommend for its clear yellow flowers that are beautifully set off by their central dark cones. The admiral is a migrant, a butterfly that has flown in from north Africa. In late August there was a worrying hiatus when migrants on wings seemed to have been scared off by the weather. I now need a fellow migrant to complete the picture, a painted lady, also a butterfly that flies to Britain above the radar. Perhaps one will glide in before the end of this column.

While I wait for it, my view forwards is focused on three objectives. The first will be realised next spring. It has to be pre-planned. It concerns hardy annuals, a view into the blue that may surprise you. Hardy annuals are plants that are usually sown in spring to flower in summer. They die after flowering and although they prolong their display if their dying flowers are cut off, they are beauties for one year only. Despite the rare sunshine, some of them have been good this year, especially nigella, or love-in-a-mist. My view forwards is to a spring in which they will excel among the tulips.

Autumn-sown hardy annuals are a trick that most gardeners miss. Sown now they have a good chance of surviving the modern British version of a winter. They will then resume growth in March and flower in April and May. I first saw the potential of this rescheduling in Ireland. In her superb town garden in Dublin, Helen Dillon used to grow cornflowers as spring bedding beside the terrace that descended into her densely planted paradise. Since the 1990s, when I saw this trick in action, British winters have become milder; autumn-sown annuals’ chances of survival are higher.

You have two options. One is simply to sow your choices directly into well-raked ground outdoors as you perhaps did in spring. The soil is still warm enough to allow germination if you sow at once: choose hardy annuals, not half-hardy ones. Thin the seedlings out next month and leave the remainder to run the risk of wintry weather. In 2022-23 my autumn-sown annuals failed in the three sharp frosts. Last year most of them survived the endless rain and flowered finely in April. I am betting on another mild run.

The other option is the one I prefer now that warm evenings are slipping away. Sow your hardy choices in a seed box and bring them on for a fortnight or so in warm, sheltered conditions. Prick them out, spacing the seedlings up to two inches apart, and continue to grow them on, still sheltered. Then in late October stand them outside to harden, and after a week plant them in gaps in the garden. They are excellent in pots too, above pre-planted tulips and so forth. In a mild year the young plants will grow on until early December. Think of them as glorified weeds: plants which certainly keep on growing.

Most of the hardy annuals are worth risking, but my top tips are cornflowers and love-in-a-mist

Most of the hardy annuals are worth risking, but my top tips are cornflowers, particularly Blue Diadem, and love-in-a-mist, especially sky-blue nigella Miss Jekyll. In April we were marvelling at the survival of last year’s marigolds, antirrhinums and so forth through the non-winter. My suggestion is to preselect the survivors you want and hope for similar conditions this winter too. This May I had excellent red poppies (Papaver commutatum) and orange-flowered calendulas (or pot marigolds). My biggest successes were hardy dark-blue anchusa Blue Angel and the lovely sky-blue Nemophila menziesii, a wild flower from California that revelled in the wet winter. Bedding plants in spring do not have to be heavy headed primulas, the mainstays of instant urban gardening.

My second view ahead is related but subtly different. I love Sweet Williams and Canterbury bells, two summer-flowering biennials that I usually forget to sow in mid June — the best time to start them to flower the following June. Whenever I have forgotten them I miss seeing them. This year I have been forgetful, so I am at the mercy of the market. Latecomers need to be canny.

Online, you will find small plants of Sweet Williams and Canterbury bells on offer in batches for fairly modest prices. As with most online garden shopping, there are snags. The order, prepaid, may take several weeks to arrive. The plants will be plug plants, often only 5-6cm in diameter, an easy size to dispatch by post. If they arrive after a fortnight in a queue of orders, they will be too small to make much headway outdoors. Sweet Williams of that size tend to be lacerated by winter wet and frost. More than hardy annuals, biennials need to gain early width and height in order to flower well in June.

The alternative is to buy plants in one-litre pots, big enough to establish outdoors and then flower in the following year. They exemplify online inflation, post Covid: Canterbury bells can cost up to £19.99 per plant, excluding post and packing. That price is a preposterous pitch to the innocent. I bought a good magnolia for the same amount only four years ago, but unlike a magnolia, a potted Canterbury bell lasts only until it flowers. It then dies.

The best course is to buy the small plug plants, pot them up individually, and grow them on in a sheltered place, preferably a greenhouse or cold frame, until they are solid plants. You may need to keep them sheltered until February or March before planting them where you want them. Never mind: Sweet Williams and Canterbury bells are worth the bother.

My third view ahead is to a tip I learned from the FT’s former veteran columnist, Arthur Hellyer. Put a newly bought deutzia in a pot with a good diameter and move it in late October to a heated greenhouse. It will grow on and produce unexpected flowers for Christmas. Last year I tried this with white-flowered deutzia crenata Nikko, sometimes sold as “gracilis Nikko”. It worked brilliantly, a white flurry for the least white Christmas in memory. I then planted my Nikko out in the garden after flowering. It missed flowering again in June but is bulking up to do so next year.

After these three looks in the forward mirror, I have returned to check the sideways view. Out in the further garden I have fine flowers on the hardy blue plumbago, a shrubby ceratostigma that is an essential item in a sunny place. As if on cue from Central Casting, two painted lady butterflies are basking on the flowers. If the cornflowers make it to next spring’s flowering line, they will be lovely too, but too early for painted ladies. They only migrate later, above our border controls.

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