ew small-flowered petunia Apricot Punch.
GARDENINGTHERE are hosts of new varieties of flowers, fruit and vegetables to look forward to this year.
Gardening is always a developing feast — a blend of traditional varieties and techniques and developments of hybrids, tools and ways of doing things.
January is the traditional month for studying seed and plant catalogues, showing just what can be nurtured, tantalisingly just weeks away.
Growing plants from seed is still, by far, the most popular, and cheapest, way of producing plants but, now small seedling 'plug’ plants from specialist growers are cheaper than they used to be, it is starting to catch on.
It’s also a useful catch-up for varieties you may have neglected to sow, or as replacement for those that may have failed.
Sometimes, nurseries release only plants, rather than seed.
One recent success from Thompson & Morgan and plant breeder Ball Colgrave has been the really dark flowered petunias.
The variety Phantom, launched last year, has been a great success because of its unusual colour. This bush variety has a virtually black background to its petals, which are marked with a yellow pin-wheel star.
Phantom is a development of Black Satin, which is strikingly jet black and helped Island garden designer Yvonne Mathews to Hampton Court success with her entry last year.
New this year is a similar petunia to Phantom. Petunia Pinstripe has dark purple petals but this time contrasted with a pinkish star marking.
It has an upright mounding habit, which is weather-resistant, so it is regarded as ideal for any garden planting, especially when mixed with other pink flowers.
Petunia Pinstripe should be available in Island garden centres during spring as rooted cuttings and later in the year as pot grown plants — not yet as seed.
Petunias and their mini-flowered relative, calibrachoa, perform extremely well in hanging baskets and patio pots when fed regularly with soluble plant food applied over the foliage and into the root area each week.
Extra feeding encourages hundreds of flowers to develop.
Only available as rooted cuttings, rather than seed, the calibrachoa family is dominated by the Million Bells and Super Bells series.
These have smaller flowers than standard petunias but carry many more blooms at any time.
Dobies and IW garden centres should be selling their Super Bells plants, including Cherry Punch and Apricot Punch later in the year and Mr Fothergill’s is marketing the new Can-Can Rose Star.
These pot-ready plants are described as "very free-flowering, with excellent heat and disease resistance, producing mounded plants smothered in masses of flowers, with distinctive pale outer edges, darker inner rings and contrasting yellow eyes."
Most gardeners can’t resist the fabulous colours and gorgeous scent of sweet peas.
Prima Ballerina is a colour combination that Thompson & Morgan says has never been seen before.
T&M has named it Flower of the Year for 2012 for its blooms of soft pink, mauve and cream with intricate veining and a delightful scent.