Poppies: These beauties will self-sow, giving you free flowers all summer

Top of the poppies! These beauties will self-sow, giving you free flowers all summer long

  • Nigel Colborn advised people to begin sowing some of their plants for summer  
  • The gardening expert said he is transplanting his crowded poppy seedlings
  • Nigel also told gardeners to grow native yellow Welsh poppies in shaded areas

This week’s mini-heatwave gave us a floral bonanza. Narcissus are still good, tulips are budding and blossoming trees throw petal confetti like wedding guests. 

Enjoy the show, but don’t let it delay your summer planting. 

Currently, I’m working with poppies. Nothing beats their cheerful June colour, so I’ve been transplanting crowded poppy seedlings. These are self-sown annuals which appeared last autumn. Poppy seeds also germinate in spring. 

So you need to sow those now for this summer. Oriental poppies are early summer perennials. Their huge scarlet-orange, crimson or pink flowers appear from late May. For acid soils, there are Himalayan poppies. 

Easiest among those, Meconopsis betonicifolia has kingfisher blue flowers on tall stems. Whatever the variety, poppies are special. 

Even our native scarlet field poppy looks lovely on a road verge or among ripening wheat. 

Nigel Colborn advised people to begin sowing their plants for summer, saying he has started transplanting his crowded poppy seedlings (pictured, purple poppies)

ADORABLE ANNUALS 

Several wild species grow in Britain but the showiest is Papaver rhoeas, the common field poppy. For gardens, field poppies come in pinks, lemon and dusky greys or whites. 

There are doubles, too, and bicolour flowers with contrasting petal edges. The other widespread annual group is opium poppies, P.­ somniferum. 

These have grey-green, hairless foliage and flowers in more sombre colours. Seed selections for poppies are widely available. 

Sarah Raven (sarahraven.com) offers a lovely field poppy mix called Mother of Pearl.  There are fine opium varieties too such as Black Beauty and Black Swan. 

EASY PERENNIALS 

Oriental poppies are sun-loving, easy perennials. Their flowers can be orange-scarlet, crimson, pink or mauve. 

Our native yellow Welsh poppy, Meconopsis cambrica, enjoys shade. 

North African Papaver rupifragum is a clump-former with vivid tangerine flowers on long, thin stems. Aristocratic true-blue poppies come from the Himalayas. Easiest to grow, Meconopsis betonicifolia, has delicate blue flowers. 

Stately, deep blue M. grandis has been crossed with M.­ betonicifolia to produce hybrids such as Branklyn and Slieve Donard. 

They need cool, sheltered conditions. That’s why my favourites are wild red field poppies and their garden cousins, the Shirley poppies. 

They ask for nothing, but give so much.