When the light and colour of Christmas is packed away its inspiring to turn to the brightness and promise of seed catalogues.
Inside the catalogue pages, a trend continues towards flowers that are frilled, lacinated, doubled, bi-coloured or show unusual colours. Also popular are dwarf versions of favourite plants and/or perennials that flower in their first year.
The hollyhock Majorette Mixed, listed by Thompson and Morgan (T&M) falls into both categories since its only one-metre tall and is said to flower the first year from seed.
Compact gaillardias, such as the AAS winners Arizona Sun and Arizona Apricot listed by T&T Seeds grow just 30-centimetres high and are described as bushy and long-flowering.
Peach is definitely in this year at T&M, which is offering the pale Peach Sorbet California Poppy, the Candy Mountain Peach foxglove and the AAS winner Portulaca Sundial Peach. Then there is the double antirrhinum Twinny Peach, listed as growing just 25 to 30cm.
Bee lovers may be interested in the write-up of Twinny Peach, which explains: The blooms are so double and tightly closed that bees are unable to enter, which prolongs the flowering period and adds to the outstanding performance of Twinny Peach.
Bees have problems with many double flowers.
Other colourful AAS winners from T&M include the nicotiniana Perfume Deep Purple, and a fiery red and yellow zinnia Zowie. Yellow Flame. Another unusual colour comes from William Dam, which offers a lysimachia Beaujolais, which has deep red gooseneck flower stems. Its not the invasive species, the listing says.
Amaranthus is hot this year, not just as a vegetable, but also for its long-lasting spikes of tiny cream, coppery or yellowish flowers. T&T Seeds lists a spectacular foliage amaranth Tricolo with yellow, green and red leaves and another amaranth Aurora, where creamy-yellow upper leaves rise above dark green lower ones.
T&T is among those offering a yellow impatiens called Jungle Gold. Its described as having orchid-like flowers and deep green foliage. Its said to grow 40-cm tall and 25-cm wide. Another interesting impatiens is the orange flowered Divine Orange Bronze Leaf from OSC. This is a strapping one60-cm tall and 45-cm wide.
Veyseys and several others are listing the AAS-winning osteospermum Asti White, reputed to resist light frost. T&T offers this and its sibling Asti Purple.
Sunflowers get lots of space almost everywhere: some are heirloom such as the red Velvet Queen or the huge Mammoth Russian. Many are multi-branching, or pollen-free or dwarf or all of these together such as Junior listed by Veyseys.
Unusual colours include the dark mahogany Claret (Wm. Dam.) and the white Moonshadow (Dominion). Veyseys offers several other untypical sunflower colours that are closing in on the truly unusual. These include Peach Passion, Jade and the Ruby Eclipse, which approaches pink.
Then theres a truly monstrous sunflower King Kong (Dominion), which is said to stand five-metres tall and produce masses of seed.
People who like green flowers might be interested in the aster Hulk (Dominion) or the chartreuse zinnia Green Lime (T&M). Friends of black leaves might care for the ornamental pepper Black Pearl (Dominion), which produces black leaves when exposed to sun. The black fruit that turns red at maturity is fiery hot.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions. Send them to [email protected].
