Baytree Garden Centre's tips for autumn planting

Baytree Garden Centre's Mark Cox offers his tips for autumn planting in this week's Out in the Garden column...

I feel quite lucky to have enjoyed the last couple of weeks of the school summer holidays with my daughter. We’ve managed to get out most days and enjoy being in the great outdoors. Though we have both noticed during our nightly ‘spot the wally’ walks, which happen just after dinner when we take Teddy Dog for a walk, that the evening temperatures are cooling somewhat.

You can also notice the cooler morning temperatures which can only mean that autumn is on its way. But, believe it or not, the autumn is a great time for planting and establishing plants before the onset of winter.

My daughter said she wanted a project to take on that wouldn’t take too long that she could do before she went back to school. To that end I suggested that she have a go at planting an autumn/spring flowering container. With quite a puzzled look on her face she asked “how do you keep a container flowering for that long?” Magic, I replied.

The magic is achieved by layering the container with selected plants and bulbs which flower and grow at different times.

Into the bottom of a large container (my daughter’s container was about 50cm in diameter and 45cm deep); fill it to about a third of the total height with a good quality all purpose compost with added John Innes.

If your container is really large then I’d advise that you place the container in situ and, before you begin to add any compost, raise it off the ground with pot feet. This will allow for good drainage and, more importantly, if the container becomes really heavy after planting you then haven’t got to have muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger to move it. For the record I have the core strength of a marshmallow.

Anyhow, onto this first layer. Add your short stemmed tulip bulbs such as Cape Cod, push them gently into the compost with the root end facing down and the pointy end upwards. There is no need to press hard here as we will be adding more compost to the container, so just cover the tops of the bulbs. Into the next layer I suggested she plant tete a tete daffodil bulbs - again pressing them gently into the compost in between the tulip bulb tips. As before, cover the daffodil bulbs so the tips are all but hidden.

We went for a mixture of bulbs for our next layer by using pansies, forget me nots, polyanthus and crocus bulbs. On this layer add a little extra compost and plant the bulbs around the edges of the container. Same drill, push them in gently, cover with compost.

Into the centre of this top layer we planted dwarf wallflowers such as Tom Thumb. We clumped three to five of them together for better effect and to give greater colour.

When you’re planting this top layer remember to not plant them too deep as you don’t want to damage the bulbs beneath.

In early spring I’ll ask my daughter to feed the bulbs in the container with a tomato feed or anything with a high phostrogen content.

Come the spring it’s like magic, when the new flowers appear and grow through each other.

True to my word this took just over an hour to complete, which made my daughter very happy. Happiness and harmony that’s what counts in this world.