Planning Seed Varieties for the Red "Hot" Border

Starting to assemble a seed list for the Red "Hot" Border for next year:

Amaranthus cruentus X powellii Hopi Red Dye I'd like to grow a tall Amaranthus with long droopy red flowers, is this the one? Or maybe this one:

AMARANTHUS 'RED GARNET'


Astrantia major 'Hadspen Blood'
AQUILEGIA 'BLACK BARLOW'
ASTRANTIA HADSPEN BLOOD
CAMPANULA PUNCTATA 'BEETROOT'
DIGITALIS PARVIFLORA
ECHIUM RUSSICUM (Similar experiment to the White ones)
HOLLYHOCK 'BLACK BEAUTY'
Lobelia fulgens 'Queen Victoria'
LOBELIA TUPA
Lysimachia atropurpurea 'Beaujolais'
Scabiosa rumelica
SCABIOSA RUMELLICA (PlantWorld)
Papaver orientale 'Beauty of Livermere'

 

D.parviflora is brown, so not too hot. Also the flowers are super small. It's one that I love but maybe better for the fun things section, along with D.lanata................


Try to track down Alstromeria psittacina. Grows up to a metre and a half (more usually a metre though) and is fully hardy. Not easy to get seeds for, but once you have a plant you'll always have seed...............


Belamcanda chinensis is a nice Iris relative for the front of the border.............


Got more ideas, but not commonly available as seed...................

 

I like the last one Longk, but there again I like irises, so that's probably why.

 

I have seeds for the first one Sheal if you're interested

 

Longk , mine are germinating now , very easy .
Kristen seen the lobelia tupa at Cambrigde B.G. and they look stunning , ps the 2 websize you showing have some really good seeds .
Moles is now one of my favourite.

 

Lobelia tupa was in the 50p-a-packet sale - so I bought a packet, and thus that's one I don't need to buy at full price

Moles is excellent - but you do need to be buying in bulk a bit - either share-with-a-friend, or keep some for next year (and the year after!) if it has decent longevity (keep in an air-tight box in the fridge perhaps?)

 

Very kind of you, but no thank you.

 

Here is a quick couple of snaps of one of my other ideas that I took yesterday - Impatiens niamniamensis..............





It has done surprisingly well in the bed this year. Buy a plant ( it's not a seed idea) now and grow it on indoors over the winter. Then chop it up in the spring to make several plants to plant out late May time.

 

You're going to be busy Kristen, I grow the Lobelia Tupa one of my favourite plants, its been flippin rubbish this year though none of my plants have grown more than a couple of feet due to lack of sun I'm sure, how about 'Ricinus' dead easy from seed and Potentilla 'Monarchs Velvet' fabulous red.


There are some lovely red daylilies too although you'd have to buy plants as they won't come true from seed, ebays a good place
'Lips of Fire'

'Long Stocking'

 

I have Ricinus in my Exotic border, but yours look great next to Mr Lucifer, so I'll nick that idea for next year

Red means red for this project I'm afraid. Those day lilies have too much yellow and look to be "maroon"? I have got some daylilies that purport to be red, but they came as tiny plugs in the spring and have been a bit neglected in pots in the shade and haven't flowered yet, so bed/compost heat outcome not yet known!.

I need a much larger holding area for plants next year - one where the irrigation is trivially simple, so that I get the best out of them. Shallow excavation, pond liner, and sand to stand them on I reckon, so that the sand provides a reservoir for any water runoff when they are watered, or I can flood the sand whilst I get on with something else.

Some of my Dahlias aren't as Red-red as I thought they would be, so I might invest in a range of them next year and try out the colours.

I was watching Gardener's World this week and the Dahlia-obsessionist said that he measured the heights of all his Dahlias (and kept details in a notebook) and then planted the bed purely on height. I've been making vague notes along the lines of "This should be further back than That", but I'm off out with the tape measure this morning to measure and record all the plants. Appeals to my sense of OCD! and will mean less is obscured next year. Some of my Dahlias are a LOT shorter than I had expected (probably too exposed here, but their heights will be same like-for-like relative to other plants in my garden)

 

The colours on the daylilies can vary greatly with weather conditions and some are really hard to capture on camera, they do need full sun to do their best, will take a little shade, would you believe these are the same 2 plants in a hot sunny year!!!!!!


I saw the Gardeners World prgramme, wow so much colour, wonder if he digs them all up to overwinter!!!!
Know what you mean about OCD lol, I have been caught early in the morning in my dressing gown by the paper boy, singing my head off, after going out with my camera to see which new dayliles are open, also can't stop growing more and more plants from seed, even though I don't know where the heck they're going, 150+daylily crosses in 1 litre pots round the side of the house, oops