Bedding plants bring plentiful colour to any garden space, flower bed or windowsill display. With their temporary and seasonal growing habits, it’s common for gardeners to switch between spring and autumn bedding seasonally to enable them to have a garden full of colour all year round.
Read on to find out when to plant spring bedding plants! To find out more about bedding plants in general, discover more in our ‘what are bedding plants?’ guide.
When to plant spring bedding plants?
You can generally plant out spring bedding once all chances of frost have gone. This is typically around late April or early May, but it may vary depending on the weather and climate change over the years.
If you want to sow your spring bedding from scratch or you’ve ordered bedding plants early from a garden retailer such as our Primrose website, you may need to wait a little while until planting them out. It’s best to keep your plants protected from the elements during this time by storing them in a greenhouse or another dry, sheltered environment.
Spring bedding planting schemes
Plants used for bedding tend to be annuals, biennials or tender perennials. If you’re struggling to know what to plant, there’s a few routes you can go down. For example, you could opt for a colour scheme approach. This would entail choosing complimentary colours to fit your theme and embrace colour in the garden. This approach works particularly well for community areas where the council plant up flower beds and borders to welcome visitors and occupants to their town.
Some of our favourite colour schemes include:
- Traditional red, white and blue – this is particularly fond of in the UK as it links to the flag of Great Britain. It’s also a set of colours that work very well together and can range in different shades from berry reds to royal blues or softer pastel hues, like pale blues or pinky reds.
- A fiery collection of orange, red and yellow – add a sense of tropic and warmth to your garden or outdoor space with these sparky bright tones.
- A soft pastel colour palette – ranging from light pinks to lilacs and mellow yellows, opting for a softer colour palette will turn your garden into a relaxing and calming place to be.
- Gothic reds, purples and darker tones – a dark colour palette will add depth, uniqueness and interest to your space. In fact, it’s not always the bright flowers that can be the most striking. Take a look at Petunia ‘Black Velvet’ for example!
If you didn’t want to go down the colour scheme route, you could simply pick the flowers you like the look of and have a nice mix and match. To design your border and arrange spring bedding plants in the best way, we recommend:
- Planting taller flowers towards the back of beds and borders – planting in this way will give your beds the height to really make them sing and create an impact.
- Planting shorter varieties like pansies or petunias towards the front of the flower bed – this will enable them to be seen and not overshadowed by taller varieties that are planted around them. It’s important to make sure none of your plants are deprived of sunlight from overcrowding or are less visible because of their short growing habit.
- Plant specific varieties in groups for a statement block of colour or en masse as opposed to individuals.
If you’re really stuck for ideas and happen to be clearing out your closet, there’s always more inventive ways of planting too!
