10 flowers for late-May colour
Easy wildflowers and cultivated plants to transform your garden
The transition between spring bulbs finishing and summer flowers opening can leave a gap of a couple of weeks at this time of year. Here are some plants that a guaranteed winners in the right conditions.
1) Silene flos-cuculi (Plant of the Month)
Oh ragged robin! You are the Wild Way incarnate. I’m overjoyed that every single one of the ragged robin plants I grew from seed and planted out last autumn are flowering magnificently in our meadow.
I’m not sure why but I’d always assumed ragged robin would be hard to grow, and I suppose it is in drier regions. They are wetland plants and need soil that doesn’t fully dry out but are more tolerant than I assumed.
Ragged robin works beautifully in gardens as well as dense damp meadows. I’ve explained how to grow them from seed in its plant profile. Interestingly the new plants are much further along than the parent in the main meadow which isn’t flowering yet.
