Avoid the flop and do the Chelsea chop !
For later flowering plants on shorter stems, do the Chelsea chop, so called, for the week of the Chelsea Flower Show.Developed by nurserymen who discovered that plants cut back when sales fell off in June, were revitalised and could beput back on sale later in the summer or early autumn. Cut back herbaceous, perennial plants, before flowering, by up to half to produce a compact and more manageable plant.
While decapitating your favourite border perennials is, at first, alarming, for spectacular, later displays it would seem fortunemay favour the braver gardener. So, have courage, the resulting flowers, though later and more numerous, may be slightly smaller, but will flower in August and possibly as late as September, allowing them to complement others that flower later, some of these will also make fine associations with shrubs displaying early autumn colour. I have been doing this for some years on my Lysimachia Ciliata with great success and also a tall white Michaelmas daisy, which just falls over if not chopped. Below is a list of plants which can be treated this way.
Generally any perennial that flowers after June
Asters,
|
Helenium,
|
Rudbeckia,
|
Helianthemum,
|
Boltonia,
|
Leucanthemella,
|
Lysimachia,
|
Eupatorium
|
Solidago
|
Nepeta
|
Hardy geraniums
|
Godetia,
|
Antirrhinum,
|
Pansies,
|
Sweet peas,
|
Echinacea,
|
Helenium,
|
Salvias
|
Penstemons
|
Sedum
Sent by Gill Catterall
|
Comments to taglines82@gmail.com
