Eleanor Clarke
GARDEN DESIGN
Easy Colour with Nasturtiums
What’s your favourite month in the garden? When do your pots and flowerbeds look their brightest, boldest, most colourful best? Chances are it’s May or June, when foliage is still that fresh dazzling green, new shoots are appearing all over the place and there are poppies, lupins, lavender, roses and more piling on the charm.
While we couldn’t agree more, and there’s no real contest for the fabulousness of late spring and early summer, it’s worth casting your mind forward a month or two at this point in the year. Especially if your garden can lack sparkle from July into August and September. It’s called the mid-summer slump and it’s very real. In fact, summers seem to be starting earlier and earlier, meaning gardens can easily fizzle out in a dry, despondent heap by early July.
The good news is there are plenty of things you can do to combat this and our favourite is to sow a packet of nasturtiums (Tropaeolum). It’s so simple and effective, and a handful of seeds sown in early summer will give you flowers from August until the first frosts. Nasturtiums are brillantly colourful, with flowers in a range of bright reds, oranges and yellows – and even moody claret and pink. And they’re one of the easiest and quickest annuals to germinate and flower. Just poke a few of the nobbly little seeds into the ground where you want them to flower, water well and forget about them: it really is that simple
How and where to grow nasturtiums
Where you sow is up to you, as long as they get a decent amount of sun. Pop a couple around the edge of a pot or hanging basket that you know will need a colour boost in a few weeks’ time, introduce them to the veg patch, where they’ll make great blackfly-attracting ground cover that’s also a favourite food of the caterpillars of cabbage white butterflies (they’ll eat the nasturtium leaves over your brassicas), or train them up a teepee of canes, like a fiery sweet pea alternative. Whichever way you choose, it’s a win.
What’s more, they need very little in terms of care and attention. Don’t worry about feeding nasturtiums as they prefer poor soil – in fact you’ll get more flowers when you grow them in poor soil; just give them the occasional water if it’s a dry summer
Nasturtiums in the kitchen
And don’t forget that as well as bringing a gorgeous long burst of colour to the garden, nasturtiums taste great too. Also known as Indian cress, their pretty scalloped leaves and flowers are peppery and delicious, a bit like super-charged watercress (in fact the two are close relatives). Throw them into salads, use them to decorate a bowl of gazpacho on a hot day.
If for some reason, you don’t want any more nasturtiums next summer, you should gather up the spent plants after the first frosts and get rid of them. Leave them be and they’ll self-seed, giving you brilliant flowers year after year.
