The pictorial meadow

The Pictorial Meadow

In this lesson, I'll share a good way to easily and inexpensively fill an empty space to provide immediate colour and interest, as well as discuss the value of annuals in a garden.

When I dug the pond, I was left with a lot of displaced soil. I brought that soil up the hill, and we made a new level that extended the barn garden out to the plum orchard. I hadn't yet decided what I wanted to do with this area, so I wanted to give myself some breathing space to think about what planting I wanted.

To do this I sowed a pictorial meadow mix, developed by Nigel Dunnett. This has provided a tremendous spectacle for this first summer while I'm getting my ideas together.

• Pictorial meadows are a series of annual seed mixes that were developed to provide a very low-maintenance and fairly low-cost solution to planting up generous spaces.
• They were originally developed to replace bedding in public amenity plantings.

This was sown at the beginning of April onto good, bare topsoil that I had just rotavated. Since then, it hasn't been watered once, and I've just done a tiny bit of weeding to take out a few pioneers that came in with the soil. Now at the end of July, and after an unprecedented heatwave, this is still providing an incredible impact. It's a really quick and easy way to provide interest in the garden.

• The mix I've used includes Ammi majus, Cosmos, cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), poppies (Papaver rhoeas) and flax (Linum).
• If I'm making a garden for a client and we're not able to take the whole site on, I may use one of these mixes as a holding pattern for areas that are awaiting development.

If you've got a new site and you're not ready or able to take the whole thing on just yet because the resources aren't quite there, something like this pictorial meadow would be a really good solution.

The Value of Annuals in a Planting Scheme

Annuals are a wonderful thing to use in a garden, particularly when sown direct like this, because they can provide an immediate impact and a feeling that a garden is lived in straight away.

• For example, a packet of Californian poppy (Eschscholzia californica) seed scattered amongst newly planted young lavender will provide real interest in that first season while the lavender is gaining strength, as long as you don't let the annuals take over.

I tend to use annuals sparingly in the main perennial planting, but where I'm doing a bit of replanting I've used Nicotiana (tobacco plant) amongst the young aster plants, and sweet peas in gaps where things have failed and I wanted to plug them with something that provides summer interest.

So annuals are fantastically useful, and you should definitely have them on your plant list:

1. They provide immediate impact
2. They're very cheap
3. They're easy to introduce
4. They're versatile – they can either be removed once the main body of the planting comes together, or kept as an ephemeral layer that comes and goes to provide yearly flux.

Match the Number of Annuals to the Space You're Planting

As with any plant that you introduce into a garden, you need to match the vigour of that plant and its lifecycle to the companions that you're putting it with.

• It's important to think about your annuals being considerate plants that need to work amongst slower-growing perennials.
• When in flower, an annual can take up a big space. You may only need four or five individual plants in a new planting to provide that early flush of interest.

Annuals Give a Chance to Experiment

Annuals are all about being immediate, and you can use that to experiment, for example with colour. When we first arrived here, I sowed four or five of these pictorial meadow mixes in different colours. That helped me to determine what felt right for this place.

Annuals are easy, quick and cheap, and help you to make decisions quickly.

Favour Annuals That You Can Directly Sow

Half-hardy annuals have value, but my favourite annuals are those that you can sow directly – the hardy annuals. They are much less maintenance – you simply sow them onto the ground at the right time, thin them if necessary, and then allow them to do their thing.

I like to introduce annuals into a planting to give it an ephemeral quality. Some of my favourites include:

• Ammi majus and Orlaya are really beautiful umbellifers that give a planting a lacy quality.
• Eschscholzia (Californian poppies), which come in bright oranges, yellows and whites, are fantastic for introducing into hot, dry plantings.
• Silene adds punches of colour to a planting and moves through a space really easily.
• The poppy mix Papaver rhoeas 'Cedric Morris' has unusual off-colours, such as grey-pinks, which are very subtle and gentle, so can be uniquely useful.

I am also prepared to grow some half-hardy annuals that need a bit more cosseting. I start them off on the windowsills and can then grow them during the cold frames.

Nicotiana for instance, which have a hugely long season – from June until the frosts come – are very useful to have on the back burner for any gaps that might need plugging at the last minute.

Further Resources

You can find out more about Nigel Dunnett's pictorial meadows, and browse all his available mixes, here.

I've also written a blog about our pictorial meadow here at Hillside.

Plant Directory

Ammi majus

Cosmos

Centaurea cyanus

Papaver rhoeas

Papaver rhoeas 'Cedric Morris'

Linum

Eschscholzia californica

Nicotiana

Orlaya

Silene

Suggested Reading

Suggested Reading

Natural Selection: A Year in the Garden by Dan Pearson

The Gardens of Arne Maynard by Arne Maynard

The Garden Jungle by Dave Goulson

Gardening for Bumblebees by Dave Goulson

Spirit: Garden Inspiration by Dan Pearson

Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City by Dan Pearson and Howard Sooley

The Garden: A year at Home Farm by Dan Pearson

Naturalistic Planting Design by Nigel Dunnett

Piet Oudolf At Work by James Corner and Noel Kingsbury (released in UK on 23 March 2023)

Dig Delve

My partner Huw and I developed the concept for Dig Delve – a blog about gardens, horticulture, plants, landscapes, nature, food growing and eating. There are four seasonal issues each year and new stories every week.

Suggested Listening

RSPB's Nature's Voice provides a library of podcasts covering many aspects of the UK's wildlife.

RHS podcasts cover a variety of gardening topics. Here are a few recent episodes relevant to the topics discussed in this course:

• Diving into ponds! And why you should get one
• Keep your garden buzzing
• Grow a million bumblebee miles
• A Toolbox for a Sustainable 2023