Wallflowers for spring
Good weather last week enabled us to get several hundred tulips planted in the borders at Genus HQ. This week we overplanted the tulips with the wallflowers that were sown back in August.
Red-hot ‘Fire King’ is a stunning pillar box red with a glowing golden eye giving the appearance of burning embers. It reaches up to 45cm in height and is beautifully scented. ‘Vulcan’, also scented, is a more compact and neat variety reaching 30cm in height and in a velvety crimson. The third variety is ‘Sunset’. This is an expensive F1 type seed and reaches the same height as ‘Fire King’ but has less of the golden eye. We have high hopes for this one and are particularly interested to see how it compares to ‘Fire King’ due to it’s higher price and breeding.
Sown in the vegetable garden in rows it was an easy job to lift a trowel full at a time, separate the roots, and then transplant. They barely noticed the move! It’s too late to sow your own now but they should be available in most outlets. Even your local greengrocer often has a bucket of bare root plants hidden in the corner. It’s always worth asking and very little trouble for the rewards of a highly scented spring display.
