Growing pots of flowers from seed

If you’re looking to grow flowers in pots and windowboxes, there’s a whole range to choose from beyond the standard bedding plants. They’ll brighten up summer gardens, yards and balconies and many come with the added benefit of attracting pollinators to your patch. Some are edible too, so you can harvest them fresh and use them to zhuzh up salads, pasta or sweet dishes.

Here’s a list of some of the flowers I’m growing from seed to add to pots and containers this year…

Nasturtiums

I just love these cheerful, sunny flowers. They’re easy to start from seed and will flower right through the summer if you keep removing the spent flowers. You’ll often find a bumblebee, head deep in the flower, feeding on pollen and nectar. The flowers, leaves and seeds of nasturtiums are all edible – I add the flowers to summer salads for their colour and peppery taste.

Calendula

Pot marigolds or calendula fall into the same ‘sunny, cheery’ category of flowers. Also easy to grow, they’ll start flowering earlier and probably go on later than nasturtiums. They come in a range of yellows and oranges, and attract hoverflies to the garden which are great predators of aphids. The petals are edible, not especially tasty but lovely for their colour.

Poppy ‘Pandora’

Best sown direct into a largish pot, these pretty poppies have a delicate charm. The dark red to paler pink flowers are lightly marbled with silvery white threads. Plant them with grey foliage plants for a lovely colour contrast.

Cornflowers

Another choice for a larger pot – the classic blue cornflower is a cottage garden favourite and will flowers for weeks on end, given a regular deadheading. I plant cornflowers wherever there’s a space – in pots or in the ground. They make lovely cut flower, are good pollinator plants and the petals can be used to decorate cakes and biscuits, or as a garnish for soups and salads.

Dahlia

Another brilliant plant for pollinators is Dahlia ‘Bishop’s Children’. They do grow tall, so need a good sized pot and some support. But if you don’t have space in the ground for them, it’s well worth trying them in the biggest container you can find. From seed the flowers range from deep pink and purple to dark red and burnt orange. Apart from their value as a bee plant and cut flower, I really like the value for money you get from dahlias – from an early sowing indoors they can be flowering from mid-summer right through to the first frost.

There are so many other flowers I could choose… and probably will grow, if I can find some space! But those that made the list all need only a little maintenance for a long flowering season and are good flowers for bees – two essentials in my garden.