My Sweet Williams were beautiful this summer. This early June photo shows rose, pink, purple, red, white and bicolor flowers all spilling over on tall plants perfect for picking.
I love Sweet Williams and planted two big beds, one in the main perennial garden and one in the back strip along the fence. They flower with gusto the first three weeks of summer and last about 10 days in the vase. What’s not to like about these?
Unfortunately part of the plant dies when it finishes blooming. Sweet Williams are biennials, although many of mine have lasted year after year, and the way to get flowers the next year is to let seed heads develop then shake over the dirt to reseed. The problem with this is the plants look awful until the new seedlings are several inches high.
I’ve had problems with grassy weeds – not sure what they are as they are not typical lawn or wild grass – getting in my Sweet Williams and daylilies. They are hard to remove while the Sweet Williams are reseeding. You can see one of these right in the front of the photo above with the leaves that stretch up and to the right. This summer they took over the entire 8 by 5 foot Sweet William planting, choking out the seedlings and the adjoining perennials. I was happy to find my perennial asters, one phlox and the centaurea (perennial bachelor button) survived the weed onslaught, nearly buried and invisible under all the grass. The anchusa, two phlox and another aster were gone.
Reluctantly I decided to cut down the size of the Sweet William bed and to put summer and fall blooming perennials in front to hide the messy looking spent plants. The few surviving Sweet Williams are in the back of this bed and the front part has phlox, asters and mums. I put our one perennial bachelor button plant in the front right corner here. It may look good in the spring and even if it seems lost all by itself, that’s a safe spot and it will be easy to move and replant.
Here is the view from several feet away. This bed is about 5 feet deep and the back has a un-thriving peony and several Sweet Williams, with daylilies on the left. From left to right the plants are phlox (one in and another to come), asters, the three mums you see and last the bachelor button. My hope is for it to bloom from summer shading into fall with the phlox and asters, then have the mums take over as the phlox declines.
We got the mums full grown and blooming last week. It’s a gamble planting full-grown mums in the fall as they don’t always have time to establish themselves, but I like being able to see the exact color and blossom shape and it’s much easier to space the plants properly when they are already grown. Kalamazoo is home to many nurseries and most are offering mum plants.
Next spring let’s look for newly constrained Sweet Williams, followed by waves of color as spring blends to summer and fades to fall.
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