Tempting tender perennials

Now that plug plants are starting to arrive in garden centres it is tempting to go on a spree, but don’t buy without first planning how to use them says Anne Swithinbank

- Anne Swithinbank

I ALMOST daren’t visit our local garden centre as winter turns to spring, because plug plants of tender perennials begin to arrive, full of green shoots and the promise of summer colour. My first instinct is to own and nurture these baby plants and I’m soon searching eagerly among the fuchsias, felicias, pelargoniums and petunias for favourite colours and unusual shades. It is easy to imagine them fully grown and sparkling with flowers, decorating the greenhouse staging, dangling from baskets, in mixed containers or planted in the ground. Of course it is way too early for them to live outdoors or even in an unheated greenhouse but surely a few won’t hurt? I have windowsills and there’s usually a discount if you buy six!

Tender perennials bred for use as bedding plants include the likes of calibrachoa (they look like miniature petunias), scaevola and diascias. Most have woody bases and are propagated by seed or cuttings. Relatively cheap to buy, they flower all summer and in warmer climates, could live on from one year to the next. In most parts of the UK we treat them as annuals because it is cheaper and easier to compost fading plants in the autumn and buy new ones the following spring. In any case, most will have flowered themselves almost to death and would require skill to coax a repeat performance.

Exceptional specimens

The exceptions are sturdy-stemmed specimens such as aeoniums, plumbago and the taller osteospermums. These are easier to keep looking good from year to year and worth overwintering somewhere frost-free.