Gardening trials - the flowers - The Chatty Gardener

Dainty erigeron, towering sunflowers – this year’s flower Gardening Trials have certainly been varied. There have been some standout stars and plenty of colour for months.

Watering has been an issue this year, particularly on my sandy soil, but all the flowers stood up well to the heat and the long autumn means I was still picking right into November.

All the seeds were supplied free in return for a fair review. Here’s what I thought of the 2018 selection – you can read about this year’s sweet peas gardening trials here.

The Gardening Trials superstar

My absolute favourite of this year’s Gardening Trials flowers has to be Dahlia ‘Dwarf Cactus Mix’, supplied by Suttons Seeds. Their slightly mad-looking appearance with whirls of petals always made me smile.

It’s the first time I’d tried growing dahlias from seed but it proved remarkably easy. Just be careful to guard against slugs and snails when you plant out. I lost one plant and another was badly ‘pruned’.

That said, once they were established the plants seemed to fend off any further mollusc advances.

They flowered steadily for months with flowers in shades of lemon, white, orange, pink and purple.

As the name suggests, these are not the average big dahlia but dainty flowers that work well in bud vases.

They’ve produced some small tubers that I am storing for next year but, I may well sow more seed as a back-up.

The supporting cast

Tithonia was another first for me and I grew ‘Goldfinger’ from Dobies’ Rob Smith Range.

I love orange and this was a really good shade. I teamed it with Euphorbia oblongata, also in in the cutting bed, as I love orange with lime green.

The plants grew to only a couple of feet tall – possibly due to the lack of water – but they were covered in flowers that went on until late October.

Next year, I’m planning to grow more plants and use some of them in the flower borders as well as the cutting beds.

I grew lots of sunflowers for this year’s Gardening Trials and ‘Vanilla Ice’ from Sarah Raven and ‘Sun King’ were two of my favourites.

The pale colours of ‘Vanilla Ice’ were a little different to the usual golden yellow and I loved the shaggy heads of ‘Sun King’ from Mr Fothergill’s. It’s similar to ‘Teddy Bear’, which I’ve grown in the past, but taller and reached around 5ft. The height meant it did need staking as the heads were quite heavy but it was well worth the effort.

If you’re looking for height, ‘Pike’s Peak’ from Suttons was the tallest I grew. It made around 6ft with classic yellow flowers.

Sunflowers don’t just come in yellow though and I tried a couple of alternatives. ‘Autumn Beauty’ from Johnsons had rusty shades that were a bit different and ‘Solar Power’ from the Rob Smith range at Dobies, had striking red-yellow flowers. Both were tall plants that needed staking.

At the other end of the scale, ‘Suntastic’ from Dobies was one of the smallest sunflowers I’ve ever tried with plants that made just 18ins. They would be ideal for containers.

There were two cosmos in the Gardening Trials: ‘Double Dutch White’, from Mr Fothergill’s, and ‘Cupcakes White’, supplied by Thompson & Morgan. Both performed well, producing masses of flowers for many weeks.

Their prolific nature did make them tricky to use as cut flowers though. In order to get a long enough stem, I found I often had to ‘sacrifice’ a much smaller flower bud.

This was particularly true of ‘Cupcakes White’, whose big flowers needed a long stem to stop them tipping out of a vase.

However, both varieties would be really good flowers for the main borders, which is where they are headed next year.

Zinnia ‘Molotov Mix’ from Suttons fared slightly better against the snails and slugs than last year’s zinnias but I still need to put in better protection. They were also rather crowded out by the tithonia, which spread much more than I had anticipated.

The zinnia were taller than I’d grown before and had wonderful zingy colours. Definitely one to try again next year in a better position.

Calendula ‘Orange Flash’, from Mr Fothergill’s, has softer tones than the name would suggest. In fact, it’s more the colour of apricots really with petals edged in darker tones and a slightly shaggy appearance. It was very pretty and worked well in a pot.

Finally, Erigeron karvinskianus ‘Profusion’, also from Mr Fothergill’s, was as easy to raise from seed as you’d expect from a plant that spreads itself liberally around any garden.