10 plants I am Looking Forward to Growing this Year

It has been a stormy and rainy day and apart from taking out the compost and hanging a bird feeder, I have not been out in the garden. Instead I decided to sort through my collection of seeds and bulbs and plan what we are going to grow this year. I plan on growing as many different plants as possible and filling the garden to bursting point with colour and scent.

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

Part of our seed collection that I was sorting through today

I made a video showing the ten plants I am looking forward to planting this year but I will run through them here too.

The first is Tomatoes. When we first started the garden two years ago, I got a couple of tomato plants from the supermarket and ever since then I have been hooked. I love the smell of the plants, the speed at which they grow and of course the fruits. This year I will be growing two plants in containers at the front of the house.

The second is Dahlias. We were kindly given our first Dahlias by my partner's mother and we planted them in a crate to grow. I loved the flowers, intricate and beautiful and so varied. This year I  have bought three more varieties to try and will also put them into a container to make them easier to protect during the winter.

Third is Mina Lobata. This is a exotic looking climber that produces fiery tri-colour flowers similar in shape to Wisteria. I got the seeds for this plant last year, a little late in the season and started them indoors. When I moved them outside, they did not take well to being hardened off and grew poorly in the soil with only one plant producing a single set of flowers. This year I am determined to do better. I will grow them outside in the cold frame so they become accustomed to being grown outside from germination and then I shall keep them in medium sized pots and place them against the fence to see if they fair better in compost rather than our soil which is an odd mixture of clay, topsoil and builders rubble.

Fourth is a classic, Sunflower. I grew five last year, three behind the rose arched bench and two close to the fences in the border. They all grew to various heights, with one of the three behind the bench being the tallest at a good seven foot plus in height. In terms of the aesthetics of the garden, the shorter plants looked better than the giants, interspersed between the other flowers in the borders, but it is just too tempting to try and grow a giant.

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

One of the smaller Sunflowers we grew last year

Fifth is Gladioli. I have never grown these before but the purple and white flowers of the Lakeland variety I have bought were just too tempting in the shop. I will plant these in the borders and see how they go and maybe use some as cut flowers for the house too.

Sixth is Climbing Beans. I have a lot of fence space in our garden and as the garden is new, it has relatively few plants of any decent height in it. I want to create the feeling of being enveloped by plants when in the garden and so I want to cover the tallest fences with climbers to create the effect. Although Climbing Beans are maybe not everyone's first choice as a decorative plant, I think the leaves and flowers of Beans are beautiful and the plants are easy and fast to grow and also should produce a decent crop of food for relatively little ground space.

Seventh is Cosmos Picote. By the end of summer last year, the garden was almost overwhelmed with the vast amounts of Cosmos I had planted. It was our first real year of growing and the Cosmos seeds grew quickly and easily and were a simple way to fill the empty newly dug borders. The Picote were my favourite variety of Cosmos I grew because they flowered heavily for a long period and the plants themselves were reasonably small and dainty in comparison to the others. I will mix them among the other flowers I am planning in my more diverse borders this year.

Eighth is Chard Bright Lights. I grew some of this last year in a medium sized container and it grew well. It provided us with one meal of tasty Chard and the stems of the plant are beautifully brightly coloured. The Sparrows that regularly visit the garden also enjoyed eating it too. This year I will plant it in the borders to try and increase the yield and also add some low cover and colour to the borders.

Ninth is Morning Glory. In a further and unrelenting bid to ensure full fence cover this year, I have some Morning Glory seeds to plant out. I don't really have a fixed plan on where I will grow them but I will no doubt catch a moment of inspiration at some point before the beginning of March when I plan to plant most of our seed collection.

Last is Calla Lily. I am always spellbound by these flowers whenever I see them in supermarkets or garden centres. I only have three bulbs to try this year as a little experiment but I am really looking forward to hopefully seeing them flower.

I have plenty of other seeds I am going to plant this year and I am sure will will cover all of them as the year moves on.