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Rosemary’s garden, Dianthus - border pinks |
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Tuesday, 27 May 2008 |
Chosen for their long flowering period, border pinks look
superb edging a path or brightening a rock garden.
Equally, they can bring the eye down to the base of an
ornamental tree like a crab-apple or cherry, after its spring
blossoms have blown away in the April gales. Pinks love
good drainage and an open sunny position. They benefit
from a dressing of sulphate of lime in winter.
The genus name of this ancient beautiful carnation
derives from the Greek words for ‘divine flower’. Border
carnations have stems which bear five or more semidouble
or double flowers around eight centimetres across.
The narrow silvery or grey-green leaves make an attractive
backdrop for the flower clumps.
In a bygone era, bunches of these small flowers with
the fragrance of cloves were carried by women and known
as posies, nosegays or tussy mussies. The latter had a
central bloom, usually a rosebud; surrounded by lavender,
sweet peas, stocks and violets, with an outer ring of leaves,
all tied together.
Sweet Williams have always been a cottage garden
favourite for bedding. In Scotland, it was the Paisley
working-class weavers (the original descendants of
Flemish Huguenots who settled in Great Britain in the
region of Queen Elizabeth I) who bred the laced pink. In
the 19th century, they managed to produce intricate
patterns, as was their trade, and created a race of pinks
which have a coloured lacy edge to the petals.
Modern varieties of pink are more vigorous than the
old fashioned ones and are repeat-flowering with two or
three main flushes of flowers in the summer. Red trailing
carnations are suitable for hanging baskets and windowboxes.
There is an F1 hybrid called Dynasty which is a dark
velvety red that flowers all summer on branching stems.
The mahogany-coloured nigrescens ‘Sooty’ and ‘Black and
White Minstrels’ are some of the latest unusual blooms,
while the dwarf ‘Indian Carpet Mixed’ are very quick to
flower once planted out this month. The Siberian Blues
from compact bushy mounds are suitable for ground
cover, the front of borders, in rockeries or in containers.
‘Micro Chips’ has a spectacular mixture of daintily serrated
pink and white-edged petals and certainly brings your
garden right into the 21st century.
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