Hey everyone and welcome back to Gardening with Ben
Well, allotments aren't just about growing vegetables and food. They are also about growing flowers
As flowers bring the bees to the plot and to the garden
and they will help pollinate other things around the plot, like your vegetables and your fruit
So planting flowers does encourage more wildlife to come to your plot to help pollinate
to give you more produce and lots of. more delights from your allotment so we're gonna show you around our plot and show
you some of the flowers that we are growing down here and it's currently July
end of July so let's see what beautiful flowers we've got growing down at the
allotment and hopefully it gives you some inspiration to get growing flowers down
in your allotment as well so let's have a look around so these are my hydrangeas
that I've got growing on my allotment as you can see they're absolutely beautiful but they're
getting covered with bindweed so we do need to trim that back and yeah look at the size of those
heads on them now these are absolutely gorgeous this is the first year that they've flowered down
on my allotment so I'm really impressed with how well they've come out to say that they are getting
inundated with the bindweed but yeah we won't be pruning these back until next year because
you'll leave them to die back and you don't prune them until the new buds start to come on them
next year. So these are absolutely gorgeous. So hopefully in a few years time, this plant will be a lot
bigger and a lot more beautiful. We've also got lots and lots of fuchsias growing on our allotment
as I've always wanted fuchs, so I've purchased absolutely alerts this year, and they're looking
absolutely gorgeous. Hopefully they will take and they will grow well and spread out and fill
the gaps in and make these look even more beautiful, every single
year. We've gone for the hardy varieties so that they survive the winter and we get beautiful
flowers every year. We've also got quite a few climbing roses on our allotment as these
seem to do really well. We've got an archway over the entrance of my plot and I'm trying to train them up
and keep them growing over so every year we'll give them a little bit of a shape and a prune
and grow them over this archway and over a few years. Hopefully it'll be covered and we'll have
lots and lots of roses growing all over. And as you can see, they're doing pretty well
And I was told the other day that when you pruning off the old dead heads don prune just that bud off Prune it back a bit and it help it flower even more and encourage it to shoot out and send more growth out so that something that I learnt the other day
we've also got this lovely roses well grown up this side another climbing rose and these are like open roses so it's easy for the bees to get in for them to pollinate and get the pollen that they need as well
This is one of my beautiful lilies that didn't get attacked by lily beetle and has managed to survive and grow
As you can see, it's starting to wither off a bit now, but it has been absolutely gorgeous and it smelled beautiful down here
And that will grow back year after year as well. So a well worth investment for a great flowering show down at the plot every single year
Yeah, look at it. Absolutely gorgeous. Down this side, we've also got some bedding plants
but as you can see the bandweed again is taking over but they're filling out and spreading and looking nice now these will only grow once this year but the geraniums we can pot up and put in the greenhouse and they'll come back next year as well so geraniums are a good investment where they'll come back year after year if you put them somewhere warm over winter we've also got some lavender growing here that's just starting to die off a bit but yeah again lavender it'll bush out it'll
fill the gaps, smell gorgeous and you can always harvest it as well. We've also got this pink lily
which is just coming out looking absolutely fantastic. Smells beautiful. Again watch the pollen as obviously
it stains but yeah this will come back year after year and flower and look absolutely gorgeous
every single year. Now this flower bed is a new investment this year when I did
the front of my shed up. I rebuilt all the front of the entrance of the shed and I rebuilt all this
new flower bed. Springtime we had tulips, hyacinns, allions, it looked absolutely gorgeous. And I wanted
to carry that on through the summertime. So I've planted absolutely loads in this area
And as you can see, we've got loads again of fuchsies. These ones are doing better. They're
more in the sunlight and they get water better. And they're looking absolutely gorgeous
and filling out really well so next year they should look absolutely phenomenal fingers crossed
they survive the winter they should do the hardy varieties so they'll come back year after year we've
also purchased some bush varieties of fuchsia so they spread out fill it up and fill all the gaps in and hopefully have lots of flowers come year after year Now these were only tiny little shoots when I purchased them from BBC Gardener World
If you remember, if you saw in the previous videos, and they've really grown really fast
So hopefully give it a few years and they'll be absolutely phenomenal down this back
We planted them towards the back of the beds so that we can still get flowers in the front
So hopefully they'll look absolutely gorgeous. We've also got some salvias. We bought these from BBC Gardner's World again
Absolutely gorgeous. Look at them. In flower, looking fantastic, growing really, really well, and coming out
Brilliant. We've got another salvia here. Again, growing really well, took well to the garden
And hopefully, over the years, it'll look fantastic. We keep trying to take some cuttings off as well to encourage more and more plants to
row down here as these look absolutely phenomenal. Again, loads and loads of fuchsias, absolutely gorgeous varieties of fuchsies, filling up well
and filling in the gaps. We've got some geraniums again hidden in this area, so we'll dig them up in the wintertime
and look after them in the shed and replant them next year. The borgonias, they won't come back next year, they'll die off over the winter, but yeah
they'll still look nice in the sun. summer time. They look absolutely gorgeous
Beautiful flowers. Red ones, white ones, pink ones. Absolutely gorgeous. We've also got another salvia here
This is a nice pink one. Beldalois. Absolutely gorgeous. Look at the colors on this one
Fantastic. This is another flower bed. I've got some Cosmos growing in this area which grew from seed
So I'm pleased with how well these have grown. They've grown absolutely well. We've got loads of buds coming on them looking fantastic
But the flowers look absolutely beautiful. Got all different colours. We had some poppies growing, but we've taken the heads off them as we're going to save the seeds for next year
So that we get more seeds growing every single year and they'll look absolutely fantastic
I've got a poppy what's about to come out. as well these are purple variety of poppies and they look absolutely gorgeous sweet peas another
favourite of people gardens because they absolutely smell gorgeous and the more that you pick them the more they keep flowering if you don pick the flowers they soon turn to seed and then they stop flowering because they think it the end of the season so the more you keep picking the flowers the more flowers will keep growing and you get
some great rewards from them so we need to pick those flowers and take them home and put them in a vase
and I can smell them from here they smell absolutely gorgeous a great addition to any garden
that you're growing. Sunflowers, another great addition to any garden because you get absolutely gorgeous heads on them
They look absolutely beautiful. And you get loads of seeds on them
so you can either roast them and eat them or you can give them to the birds to eat
or you can save the seeds to grow next year, saving your mild money
But yeah, we've got lots of sunflowers. The heads are about to come out on them
This one's got quite a few heads growing on this one. So hopefully that one's going to look absolutely fantastic
And also, what you can do when they die off is save the stalks
and use them as canes because they turn rock hard and the great supports as well
So come in handy for growing beans up and using it as a frame
Colundola, another great flower. It spreads like weeds. so if you don't want them to grow everywhere, don't plant them, but I don't mind them
They look absolutely gorgeous. They'll grow everywhere. They'll send all the seed pods out at the end of the year, and they'll start growing more flowers year after year
So, yeah, absolutely great. And I believe you can have them in salads
So I've never tried them in salads, but if you want to give it a try, have a look online and see what you can use them in to eat
So that has been a tour of all my flowers that I'm growing down here at the allotment
as you can tell absolutely fantastic adds a lot of colour to the garden as well
attracts the bees attracts the butterflies attracts the wildlife and some of the smells that you get from
some of the flowers are phenomenal as well so I encourage you all to grow some flowers down at
your allotment garden and make the most of all the space that you've got and yeah make it look beautiful
and not just bland green vegetables have some nice color down there as well so if you've enjoyed
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on your allotment and in the garden until next time remember keep smiling keep shining and keep
gardening with ben everyone