Beautiful biennial flowers, blooms and seeds

I thought I would share some photos of my beautiful biennial flowers blooming in my garden in June.

Not only do they look fabulously colourful, they are a treat for the pollinators too.

Moreover, June and July is the perfect time to be sowing biennials for next year’s blooms.

Biennials are flowers that are sown in late Spring or early Summer, which then germinate and grow into a small plant which flowers the following year.

I will be sowing more sweet william, foxgloves, and hesperis or sweet rocket.

Another biennial that can be sown now is honesty. Not forgetting the fantastic forget me not and of course, wallflowers.

So, here are a few of the biennials I grow.

First biennial flowers

My first photo shows a range of colourful sweet william flowers. I must admit that for many years I only grew my favourite dark varieties. However, more recently I have chosen to sow and grow every colour I could find, and this is the result!

I have also chosen one of my photos for the top of this post, showing a beautiful red admiral butterfly drinking some nectar on a very colourful variety.

If you grow these beautiful, colourful biennial flowers, they will reseed themselves for future years and pop up to provide more colour for years to come.

In addition, they are a magnet for the pollinators so well worth growing to provide nectar for our bees, butterflies and other insects.

Also, Sweet Williams are fairly compact plants, so they are a great choice for containers, pots and for window boxes.

Being sweetly scented, they are a good choice for cut flowers too to bring indoors.

Purple honesty

Next, I have the beautiful purple flower called honesty.

My photo shows them as a sea of purple setting off the pure yellow of the kerria Japonica nearby. The white flowers are the fabulous comfrey, another magnet for the bees.

I let them grow wherever they like in the wilder parts of my garden amongst the longer grass, which is a haven for wildlife.

I will not be sowing more honesty this year as they are so established in my garden, that they self seed everywhere without my help.

However, if you do not have any in your garden, I can thoroughly recommend sowing some seeds.

As they flower in mid to late spring, they bring some welcome colour to add to the tulips and other spring bulbs.

Furthermore, they will grow in sun or shade, so they are undemanding plants for the garden.

More beautiful biennials

Next up is the fabulous foxglove. This upright beauty is an absolute magnet for bees and other pollinators such as butterflies.

This beautiful pink foxglove is adding stature to my flower borders this year and are more prevalent that the white ones of previous years.

Growing to a height of 120cm, they make truly elegant spires, reaching towards the sky. Available in many colours, including this native purple pink, white, and light pink.

Foxgloves are happy in shade, so they are ideal to brighten up a shady area. Although, they will also grow in full sun, and they happily bloom in sunny and shady borders in my garden.

Providing us with splendid colour between June and September, the pollinators get a valuable source of nectar too.

Furthermore, foxgloves self-seed freely, so once you have them, you can have plenty more dotted around if you wish.

The lovely forget me not

My next photo is of the humble forget me not with a bee fly.

These lovely little flowers are usually light blue, but there are a few pink or white varieties. I will stick with the blue I think.

Another fabulous flower for the pollinators, and I managed to get a snap of a bee fly drinking some nectar this spring.

As they self seed, once you have these flowers you will never be without them.

They can also be dug up in clumps after flowering and added to other parts of the garden.

I love the effect they have when grown with tulips. A frothy sea of blue under the big blousy tulips looks fantastic.

As they are happy to grow in shade as well as sun, they make another ideal plant for any area in the garden.

Sowing biennial flowers

Finally, it’s the sowing of lovely biennial flowers. And, it is so simple to do. They just need to be direct sown where you want them to flower next year.

So, it is just a case of scattering the seeds thinly over the soil and covering with a light layer of more soil. And then gently firming the soil and remembering to add a label so you know what should be germinating where.

lastly, you just need to water if the ground dries out. Unlikely in England at the moment it seems!

I have added links below for some seed options.

Click here for Thompson and Morgan seed options.

And click here for Sarah Raven seed options

I hope that you have enjoyed this biennial flowers post and will join me next time.

There will be a new post staring my dear friend, the Cosmos Queen, with her new dahlias. Her dahlia borders have expanded so this year there will be an even bigger fabulously colourful display.

Here is a link to the last Cosmos Queen dahlia post with plenty of dahlias flowering last year.

The Cosmos Queen’s beautiful dahlias

This blog is an affiliate for Thompson and Morgan and Sarah Raven. If you click on one of the seed links above, and make a purchase I may receive a commission, at no additional cost to you.

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