Sweet William

Hello to everyone.

My second year sweet William are very tatty and straggly ....do I just leave them alone or should I be pruning them back.

Thank you

 

Mine did the same, and some are still alive now, in their third year. I'm going to cut them off. If they don 't like it, tough. They did flower last Spring but got on my nerves with all the straggling about. If they still produce a few flowers from the remaining central rosette I'll be happy with that.
My grandma used to grow lots of sweet William. It's not very popular these days, I don't think people have enough patience to grow biennials!

 

Thanks for the reply, I think I will cut them down then. They don't look pretty at the moment

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner

 

I grow Sweet Williams for cut flowers. They are 'perennial' but start deteriorating after the first year so I sow fresh/plant a new bed every year and rotovate the oldest bed after picking the 3rd and final crop.

In one of my cold frames awaiting planting out (left a bit late due to rubbish weather).



Single blooms


Double blooms (cheap seed from Lidl)



P.S. The water they're in can smell a bit after a while, hence the nickname 'Stinking Billy'

 

Wife grew some from seed 2 or 3 years ago. They barely flowered at all in their first year, but the second year they just bloomed and bloomed and kept going right into the start of winter. Some bloomed again last summer but not as well, so I dead headed them and they got shorter and shorter over time

But, they produced thousands of seeds, and now I can see young plants among the older ones, plus I collected a load of seeds for this year. I was really impressed with them. I'm going to try to fill quite a lot of the garden with them this year. And the fragrance, fantastic.

Welcome to GC by the way Burt