The best seeds to sow now

Flower gardens with a difference depend on seed sowing. Order the seeds now; sow some of them promptly and hang on to the others until the soil warms outdoors. Most of the best are easy to germinate and grow on. There is such satisfaction in seeing them safely to maturity. There is also scope for experiment. Faced with a seed list, my eyes are too big for my space and time. I always over-order.

In garden centres the display racks of flower seeds are only a fraction of the range available. It pays to shop online, so here are some good suppliers. Thompson and Morgan (thompson-morgan.com) leads the field and now owns Suttons (suttons.co.uk) and Dobies (dobies.co.uk). Suttons and Dobies still maintain separate lists and are worth tracking too.

I have just found temporary discounts of 60 per cent on sweet-pea seeds from Suttons: I have bagged a packet of an old favourite, the sky blue Noel Sutton. From Dobies I have found packets of its excellent red petunia, F1 Tidal Wave Red Velour. Twenty seeds cost £4.49 but after a sowing under glass indoors, this petunia grows on to flower freely for months. It needs no deadheading and is excellent in hot summers. I strongly recommend it.

I also strongly recommend Plant World Seeds, which supplies globally from its home base in Devon (plant-world-seeds.com). Its list is full of rare and under-appreciated varieties as well as mainstream selections. If, like me, you enjoyed HTSI’s recent article on mimosa and how to eat it, you will find seeds at Plant World of an easily germinated mimosa, Acacia dealbata, for £2.75 a packet.

Mr Fothergill’s Seeds near Newmarket has a big range of vegetable seeds (mr-fothergills.co.uk) but also sells flower seeds and owns Johnsons Seeds (johnsons-seeds.com), which has a range selected by the queen of cut flowers, Sarah Raven. Seed packets have a no-nonsense picture of Raven on them, so they are easily identified in garden centres, running from A for Ammi majus, a good airy white annual for gardens and vases, to Z for zinnia.

I would not make Zinnia Envy, a chartreuse green, one of my top 20, but Raven swears by it as a cut flower. On many packets she gives a good tip: sear the flower stems in very hot water for 15 seconds and then leave them overnight in very cold water before arranging them in a vase the following morning. They will last much longer.

 Spurred on by the Raven range, I have bought a packet of an old favourite, a white-flowered Agrostemma, or corn cockle, now called Milas White Queen. It appears in late summer in that holy of holies, the White Garden at Sissinghurst. It is so easy to grow because it can be sown directly into well-raked ground outdoors from April onwards. In the wild it is at home in south-west Turkey, so it is well up to life in a hot summer in Britain or a holiday bolthole abroad.

I am also trying Raven’s recommended Nigella African Bride. She calls it “the most glamorous of all the Nigellas”, quite a claim, and credits it with “white Tudor ruff flowers”, referring to its white petals with purple stamens protruding from their centre. She also rates the purple seed pods that follow the flowers, as she uses them indoors in arrangements.

I continue to grow the classic pale blue nigella, true love-in-a-mist, the Miss Jekyll variety. I even scatter its seeds and lightly rake them into damp parts of summer borders. They usually appear in flower in August and need no attention. Last year in Britain’s extreme heat they were a flop.

It is excellent news that Johnson’s Raven range has picked on the deep blue Phacelia campanularia. I have recommended it here for decades but have seen it disappear from many seed lists meanwhile. It can be sown directly outdoors in April and it then flowers in July at ground level, best where it can be watered during hot summers. The flowers are a pure deep blue with lovely white contrasting anthers.

If it had just been discovered ready grown in a pot by Monty Don on TV, it would be selling by the hundred thousand, but as it has been championed by me for 50 years, it has kept a lower profile. It grows wild in California and I learn from Raven’s packet that it is often used there on “farms and organic vineyards to attract beneficial insects”. They do not buzz round it in my garden.

 What about tobacco plants? You probably forget about them till mid-May and then buy plants crammed into narrow strips for bedding out. Homegrown ones are far better value and allow you much more choice. Thompson and Morgan offers 12 varieties, including the tall Nicotiana sylvestris, which is a mainstay of my late summer. It grows about 4ft high and has heads of narrow drooping white tubular flowers, more striking than photos in catalogues convey.

I first learnt to love it in the great Oxfordshire garden of Nancy Lancaster, owner of the interior design business Colefax & Fowler. Her eye for style was unsurpassed. The tubular tobacco-like flowers reminded her of her youth in Virginia and so she dotted them down box-edged beds in her walled garden.

This tall tobacco plant needs rich soil and water to reach its best, but then it is a superb sight. Plants will turn up at £3 each in pots in May, but they are only annuals. They are easily raised by the score from one packet, sown in heat in March. The big leaves have to be protected from slugs when they are first bedded out, but they are a lovely green feature thereafter.

Classic scent comes from Nicotiana x sanderae Fragrant Cloud, up to 3ft high with big clear white flowers, or the even easier Nicotiana affinis of similar height and smaller flower shape. Either is excellent; packets of seed cost less than £1, the price of half a plant ready grown in May. Last year I began to like Nicotiana x sanderae Perfume Deep Purple, a newish violet purple at a height of only a foot and a half. It is noticeably scented, but the heat in July ruined it.

Back, finally, to sweet peas. This month they should be sown in pots in a heated place, preferably a greenhouse, but if you opt for a warm dark cupboard be sure to bring them immediately into the light when shoots first appear through the soil. Early sowing leads to early flowers. I have fallen for Night and Day from Thompson and Morgan, a mixture of sweet peas with white flowers and deep burgundy purple ones. Plants like to grow up a trellis but must be watered well at the roots.

King Edward VII is an old scented variety with good stems and scarlet flowers, available from Mr Fothergill’s with an RHS imprimatur. In a coronation year you may be tempted but I will stay faithful to April in Paris, a whitish one with pale mauve edging. It reminds Sarah Raven of “delicate Venetian marbled paper”, but it reminds me of Paris, though April is a month when no pois de senteurs flower outdoors there. Fantasy is one of the pleasures when growing new hopefuls from seed.