Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:01.176)
Hey flower friends and welcome back to the podcast that believes that flowers should be local, seasonal and grown with love, not wrapped in plastic and flown halfway across the world. I'm Joan Westerby and I'm the founder of the Hampshire Seed Company. And I'm a flower farmer florist who's gone from wedding chaos to seed packet chaos these days. And I also help other growers to build blooming good businesses. So whether you're planning your first row of cosmos,
or scaling up for serious sales, you're in the right place. And today's episode is all about summertime sowing. That in-between season when most people are too busy deadheading to realize that the real flower farming magic is happening quietly in the seed trays. We're talking biennials and perennials today and why now is the time to sow for next year's color, scent and sales.
So if you're ready to get ahead while everyone else is winding down, then keep listening. Today's episode is a bit of a shorty episode, I'm gonna be honest, because the sun is shining and I want to be out in the garden right now. But I did want to share this with you today. Okay, so here's the thing. Summer often feels like the end of the season for a lot of people. You're harvesting, you're sweating, you're maybe even daydreaming of your winter sun or even your summer holiday.
But while your annuals are out there strutting their stuff in their pots or in your field, your 2026 flowers are tapping you on the shoulder like, hey, hello, have you got a minute? It's our turn. So too many growers, they wait until autumn or even spring, i.e. next spring, to think about sowing biennials or perennials. But by then you've missed the boat and you often
have to end up waiting for another year for the blooms to show. Now not always, so it's always good to know which ones will flower the same year, like the Bascom for instance. From an early sowing the Bascom will flower in the same year, but not everything will. So if you want some robust, so if you want some robust fox gloves or some hefty Hesperus and luscious lupins which will make jaws drop next May and June, that work actually starts.
Jane Westoby (02:27.93)
now. Okay, so let's begin with the biennials. Okay, your flowering freeloaders. So biennials are the quiet overachievers in the garden. You sow them in summer, they grow a bit, they might sulk a bit over winter, but they will explode into bloom next springtime, just in time to plug that May gap. Okay, so my
top flowers, my top biennials for sowing right now in June and July are Hesperus. I particularly like the white one but we've got some really lovely lilac as well so I've already sown some of mine already so I'm gonna really look forward to that. Honesty, so this is Lunaria, this is the one that has those gorgeous disc seed pods, completely underrated until you see those seed pods and it's absolutely
beautiful and great for winter arrangements for drying. Okay, fox gloves, they probably don't need a lot of introduction. Campanula, even Salvia scluraeia. my God, the scent from Salvia is just so amazing and that needs to be sewn down too, okay? So these all need to be sewn now through to maybe the end of July, just to get enough leaf growth before autumn sets in. The sooner the better really, the later you...
You sow them, the smaller they'll be and the less likely they will be able to get through the winter. Okay, so sow them as soon as possible. So let's move on to perennials. So these are the gift that keeps on giving. So these are your long game. You sow them once and they come back stronger every year. Just think about that. A whole section of your garden that needs...
zero replanting come spring, which for me is bliss as I always run out of sewing space in spring. know, March is crazy. The last thing I want to be doing is sewing perennials in March when I don't have a lot of space left. Okay. So it's just bliss when, when I don't have any more space. So for perennials, my top perennials, I'd say if I had to just pick one, my top would be a lupine by a long shot, an absolute long shot.
Jane Westoby (04:45.47)
And I didn't even really, as a gardener, I didn't realize that lupins were cut and come again. I just thought they flowered once. But actually, as a flower farmer, I know that they will come back. So the more you cut them, they will flower over and over and over again. They are amazing. They'll give you tons of blooms all summer long. Okay, perovskia. that's gorgeous blue, wafting blooms.
gorgeous Centranthus. I like Centranthus ruba which is the pinky colored one and I know it some people see it as a little bit weed like because it it pops up everywhere and I see it when I go down to Weymouth actually I see it on the sandbanks in Weymouth just growing wild but it's absolutely gorgeous it's so delightful and last year I teamed my Centranthus with some pink
snapdragons, some light pink snapdragons in my front garden and it looked absolutely delicious. Now I don't have the snapdragons this year, I'm really disappointed that I didn't think to put more in so anyway I'm gonna be putting some more in for next year. A few more so Feverfew, Akinasia, Rudebeckia, Achillia, these will all come back year after year so they are just so amazing okay.
So sow them modules or in pots and they're bulk up before winter. So choose your favorites. Sow into trays or pots. Now you can direct sow some seeds, but honestly, I just don't, okay? I forget to water them if they're in the ground. They don't get looked after and mine always fail, I'll be honest. So I nearly always sow in pots. Having said that, this afternoon, which is why I want to get out into the garden,
I'm going to be sewing fox gloves and Lepidium this afternoon in a seed bed because they do do very well in a seed bed. Okay. And I also say my poppies and my Nigella Direct. But other than that, there's really not a lot that I would recommend particularly. And I know a lot of people do so a lot of their seeds direct, but they just don't do so well for me. So you can test and see if it works for you or not. Okay. So at this time of year,
Jane Westoby (07:07.978)
you do need to make sure that you keep your pots or trays in light shade or under cover so they don't dry out. You know it's so hot at the moment that your seed trays will dry out in literally a matter of hours if you don't actually keep them under cover or in the shade. So I will still use a cover over the top of mine to keep the moisture in as well.
And this is another reason why you need to keep them in the shade because if you don't, you'll literally boil your seeds out in the sun with a lid on them. So that's not good. That's never good. Okay. So when they, since they've germinated, you take the lid off, you can then start to introduce them into a little bit of sunshine, and then prick them out, grow them on. when they're big enough to handle, you know, pop them up. You can maybe then pop them out into the garden. You could also overwinter them.
in a cold frame if you wanted to. There's no heat required, they'll be fine over winter. So this is kind of for me, it's the least fussy kind of seed sowing. You don't really need to babysit them with heat that you just need to make sure that you do keep them moist and out of the direct sun just while they are germinating. So just imagine next May when your neighbors are panicking because their tulips are dying off.
and their cosmos haven't flowered yet. And meanwhile, your plot is dripping in fox gloves and wafting with Hesperus and feeding the bees. And if you're flower farming too, then it'll be feeding your bank balance as well. So that's the power of summer sowing. So it's not flashy, it's not trendy, it's just really quietly effective. And guess what? If you sow too much and you should, you can always give them away to friends. They will be very, very appreciative, I'm sure.
So if you want the full list of what I am sowing this summer over the next few weeks, then head over to my blog and I will pop everything into a blog post for you. So what to sow this summer for next year's blooms. I will link to it in the show notes for you and it's packed with everything that we've talked about today. So that's it for today's episode of the Blooming Garden podcast. I'm gonna be going out in the garden in a second, but if this...
Jane Westoby (09:23.8)
podcast has helped you to just feel one step ahead of your garden or the flower farming curve right now then do me a favor please please tap that follow on your podcast app it really does help me be able to make more episodes and bring you more magic and more gardening insights so goodbye for now I'm heading off out into the garden and I'll see you next week