CRACKING CHRYSANTHEMUMS

CRACKING

Chrysanthemums

These colourful plants will beautify your borders as the days start to shorten, says Adam Appleyard

THIS PAGE Chrysanthemum 'Froggy'. OPPOSITE Mixed chrysanthemums displayed in a wooden wheelbarrow.

ardens can start to look rather bare in autumn, but fortunately there are one or two groups of plants that provide vibrant colour – and exquisite cut flowers – right through to early November.

Chrysanthemums are just such end-of-year stunners, and they have a long and illustrious history of brightening up the autumn garden. They were being grown as edible herbs in China at least 3,000 years ago and they have been popular with horticulturalists ever since.

Chrysanthemums arrived in Japan in the 5th century and were so admired that they were eventually adopted as the crest of the Imperial family. By the 18th century chrysanths were being enthusiastically adopted by experimental European gardeners, and today there are literally thousands of different cultivars available. In form chrysanthemums can range from relatively simple, daisy-like flowers (chrysanthemums belong to the same family of plants as daisies, asters and sunflowers) to massive pompoms consisting of hundreds of densely packed petals. As for colours, you’ll find everything from purest white through creams, yellows and zingy oranges to rich reds and punchy purples.

From a gardener’s point of view there are two main groups of chrysanthemum: earlyflowering and late-flowering. The earlyflowering ones can be planted out in your garden and will flower in late summer and autumn. Late-flowering chrysanthemums will bloom in winter but they’re much more delicate and usually only grown as houseplants. For present purposes we’ll concentrate on the early-flowering, hardier chrysanths that you can use to beautify your borders.

OPPOSITE: LEFT Chrysanthemum 'Rose Pink Debonair', also known as 'Rosepink Yodebo'. RIGHT Chrysanthemum 'Breitner Dark'. THIS PAGE: TOP Chrysanthemum 'Aunt Millicent'. BELOW Chrysanthemum 'Dekorative Wendy Red'. Hardiness, of course, is a matter of degree, and some varieties of chrysanthemum are hardier than others. Most will survive a mild winter – one where the temperatures don’t dip too much below minus 5ºC – providing they’re in a sheltered spot and you cover them with a good thick protective mulch of bark chippings, straw or compost once the days start getting chilly. In more exposed gardens, or if you don’t want to risk losing your plants, you’ll need to lift them and store them in a cool, frost-free spot until the following spring.

Chrysanthemums will perform best in a sunny spot on fertile, moist but well-drained soil. Dig plenty of homemade compost into your chosen site before planting and fork in slow-release granules of a general purpose plant feed just below the surface.

PINCH FOR PUNCH

Pinch out the tops of the main stems in early summer to encourage sturdy, branching plants, and be prepared to stake taller varieties once they start putting on a spurt of growth. Drench fortnightly with a high-potash feed once the flower buds begin to form. As with so many other flowering perennials, deadhead them regularly to encourage a long-lasting display.

When it’s time to take your chrysanthemums in for the winter, lop your plants down to around 10–15cm high, dig them up and pack them into trays. Cover with compost – no need to water them – and store in a cool, frost-free location such as a garage or garden shed.

In spring, chivvy your chrysanthemums into growth by moving them to a greenhouse or cold frame and watering them a little. They will soon put out new shoots, from which you can easily make cuttings to increase your stock. Don’t plant them out until all danger of frost has passed.

Of course if you want to reduce the faff of digging up and replanting your chrysanthemums every winter, you can always grow them in pots. If you feel particularly energetic you can even sink the pots into your borders to integrate them with your more permanent plantings.

THIS PAGE: Korean Chrysanthemum 'Topsy'.

CHOICEST CHRYSANTHS

With such an enormous range of cultivars to choose between, it can be hard to know where to start. It’s not a bad idea to opt for plants that have proved their merit by winning the RHS Award of Garden Merit – as have most of the following. AWESOME ORNAMENTALS

To light up the front of a border, the 30cm-tall Chrysanthemum ‘Linda’ is a good choice. Its double flower heads are a buttery yellow, fading to creamy-white at the edges as they mature. If you’re in search of something bigger and bolder, there are plenty of ornamental cultivars with large, rounded or globular flower heads that measure up at around the one-metre mark. ‘Red Wendy’ and ‘Beacon’ are reddish-orange, ‘Max Riley’ and ‘Yellow American Beauty’ are yellow, ‘Froggy’ is a vivid yellowish-green, ‘Breitner’ and ‘Debonair’ are pink, and ‘May Shoesmith’ and ‘Angelic’ are white.

BEST FOR BEES

Your local bees, butterflies and other pollinators, however, would prefer you to plant cultivars with a more open, less densely petal-packed structure – in other words, the ones that look more like daisies than pompoms or footballs. Fortunately if you want to give your insect friends a helping hand there are plenty of handsome cultivars that both you and they will appreciate, including the pinkish-purple ‘Carmine Blush’, the smouldering orange ‘Topsy’ and the pale pink and hugely floriferous ‘Aunt Millicent’.

For something entirely different, those of you with rock gardens might like to try the diminutive Chrysanthemum weyrichii. It’s semievergreen and sends up daisy-like flowers on wiry 10cm stems. Much hardier than the rest, this is one chrysanthemum that will survive most Yorkshire winters without needing a helping hand. Chrysanthemum yezoense has similar flowers but is larger – around 50cm high. It too is robust enough to overwinter unprotected.