autumn/winter bedding plants

newbie77

If I order online plug plants for autumn bedding, will they flower in Nov/Dec or in spring? I dont have greenhouse but I can pot them up and grow on outside.

I dont need anything that flowers in Feb/March. I need colour in Nov/Dec and wondering if there is any point in ordering online or shall I just go to B&Q/wilko etc and get what is already flowering in Nov.

JoeX

I don’t think so, but you can buy quite large volumes of garden ready bedding at low prices either online or in the GCs.  Pansies usually feature heavily.

Fairygirl

I'd just go to the kind of outlet you mention, or a G. Centre.
Plug plants are unlikely to be growing well by December, even in a mild area. 

Buttercupdays

Whether even 'winter bedding' will give you any colour in Nov/Dec depends on the weather and where you live. If there are hard frosts or torrential rain or snow, then those plants too will look very sad.

Your best bet for winter colour is evergreen foliage (doesn't have to be green!) colourful stems and berries. Some Hellebores have early flowers and Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' can be in flower every day of the year if the weather isn't too awful. I lost mine last year to the weather for the first time, when we had freezing rain and -14C!
You can grow your colour indoors instead with pots of bulbs - hyacinths, Amaryllis or early  dwarf daffodils or narcissi, and you don't have to go out in the cold to enjoy them

Fairygirl

Yes - they're  usually a waste of time here @Buttercupdays.
I use foliage plants and plenty of evergreens for winter colour, and Hellebore niger  flowers from November onwards,  so I have quite a few of those. 

newbie77

Thanks for replies. I have tried pansies and primulas from seed in past and could never get those in flower in Nov. I was thinking may be plug plants would flower but may be not. So looks like my best option is to get what is in flower from GC or diy stores.

BenCotto

My experience of Winter pansies and violas has always been a disappointment. They look great when you buy them but by mid October flowering falls off sharply. They stay forlorn and bedraggled all through November, December, January, February, March and most of April and only pick up when Spring is well advanced and you’re looking to clear the land for Summer bedding.

JoeX

newbie77 said:

Thanks for replies. I have tried pansies and primulas from seed in past and could never get those in flower in Nov. I was thinking may be plug plants would flower but may be not. So looks like my best option is to get what is in flower from GC or diy stores.

If you’re in London like me I think primula are better from January onwards, in autumn I have the rudbeckia still going in October then they provide seed heads through winter.  Cyclamen and winter cherry I like to put in october/November.

borgadr

I overplanted pots of spring bulbs last autumn with pansies, and honestly they looked scraggly and small all winter and only starting looking good in the spring. I won't do it again. The pots I overplanted with heuchera and carex looked a lot nicer through the winter.

didyw

My winter pots last year were some small grasses, small ferns, cyclamen and early bulbs - reticulata irises especially then tete a tete daffodils and a corsican hellebore.  I moved the grasses and ferns into the garden before planting up for the summer.  Again I used mainly perennials but also some dahlias and bits and bobs from the GC for instant colour.  The winter pots were more successful than the summer ones I think because I have not been as assiduous about watering and feeding the summer pots as I should have been.  I did have some little violas in some pots and they did all right. 

TheGreenMan

I grow heuchera, ferns, grasses and epidmedium for winter interest when the summer plants are dying down. I had some pansies last summer that flowered continually through to April of this year but that was luck rather than by design.