Growing Specialty Cut Flower Pansies For My Garden
Hello friends,
This year I'm starting a new garden project, growing specialty pansies and violas as cut flowers. With their frilly petals, unusual colours, and longer stems, many modern pansy and viola varieties are well suited to being cut flowers. The current Japanese pansy cut flower craze has made me curious to see what all the fuss was about. Over the coming months I'll be growing them, photographing them, and discovering which ones are worth the current hype.
Let's begin with the seeds I've chosen. There isn't a huge range of specialty cut flower pansy and viola varieties available in New Zealand, so I selected the best options I could find from local suppliers:
The varieties I selected for this project are:
- 'Moulin Rouge Mixed F1'
- 'Sweet Pea Mixed F1'
- 'Fizzy Lemonberry F1'
- 'Frizzleswizzle Mix'
- 'Gelato Salmon Red'
- 'Frizzleswizzle Raspberry'
- 'Matrix Sangria'
- 'Pandora's Box'
- 'Plum Antique F1'
- 'Rococo Frill Mix'
- 'Brush Strokes'
- 'Aalsmeer King Size Mix'
Because pansies and violas are hardy plants that don't mind winter conditions, I sowed the seeds back in July. It didn't take long to fill a couple of covered seed trays with sieved seed-raising mix and get them sown.
I've found that many seed-raising mixes contain surprisingly large pieces of bark and stone, which can easily end up sitting on top of newly sown seeds and interfere with germination, so I always take the time to sieve my seed mix before sowing.
Once the seeds had been sown, lightly covered with seed-raising mix, and labelled, the trays were gently watered and moved into the glasshouse to await germination.
It has been a couple of weeks since the seeds were sown, and the first seedlings have already begun to emerge, with more appearing every day. So far, germination has been encouraging. To protect the young seedlings from frost and snow (which we had a couple of weeks ago), the trays are covered with their plastic lids each night and wrapped in frost cloth.
I'm looking forward to seeing how these varieties perform in the garden over the coming months and discovering which ones become my new favourites.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook.
Restocking My Seed Boxes for the New Growing Season
Hello friends,
It's seed buying time again, when New Zealand seed companies tempt gardeners with their favourite seed packets, along with a bunch of new exciting varieties. Before I placed any orders this year, I wanted to take stock of the seeds already stored in my Franchville 16 storage cases from Spotlight.
I may have been lasy last year and neglected to throw out empty seed packets as I sowed seeds throughout the season. As a result, my seed boxes looked far more full than what they actually were.
It took quite a while to work through every compartment in the storage cases, checking whether packets still contained seeds, noting expiry dates, and updating my seed database. By the time I finished, I had a clearer picture of which varieties were still in stock, and which ones needed replacing. My herb and vegetable seed stocks were in pretty good shape, but my flower seed stocks were heavily depleted. Many seed packets were nearly empty, and ones like cosmos and calendula had completely run out.
Knowing how depleted my flower seed stocks were, and how expensive they would be to replace, I opened about a million tabs in my web browser and got to work comparing varieties and prices from different seed suppliers. After many hours at the computer, I had narrowed down the varieties I wanted, worked out which suppliers offered the best prices, and was finally ready to begin placing orders with the following seed companies. These are just a few highlights from this year's seed order. There were many more packets than I could realistically include in one blog post!
From Kings Seeds, I mostly purchased a bunch of cosmos, herbs, zinnias, and viola and pansy varieties. I'm especially looking forward to growing the Zinderella range of zinnias this season. And yes, I also fell victim to the chocolate cosmos growing craze sweeping the gardening world right now.
From Egmont Seeds, I purchased a selection of herb, tomato, calendula, and marigold seeds, along with a large cut flower packet of Cosmos 'Fizzy White'. This is my favourite cosmos variety, and it's not easy to find in small packets, so I decided to splurge on a 300-seed packet. I'm sure they'll all get used eventually...even if it takes me a few seasons to get through them.
From Susie Ripley, I purchased several rarer flower varieties, along with strawflower and statice for drying. These were varieties I hadn't been able to source elsewhere, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with dried flowers this season.
And finally, from Crawford Road, I purchased several new-to-me calendula varieties, along with violas and some new cosmos and cornflower selections to trial in the garden this season.
Just when I thought all my seed buying was done, I discovered that Wild Flora was selling some rare flower seeds that were simply too tempting to resist. First on my list were seeds from the dahlia variety 'April Heather'. This collarette dahlia is a rare plant to source in New Zealand, and while I can't justify spending $100–$300 on a single tuber, I was more than happy to invest in a packet of its daughters for my dahlia breeding project.
Wild Flora also had progeny from several Floret zinnia and celosia varieties available for sale. These seeds were only offered in New Zealand during 2024 and can no longer be purchased directly, so when the opportunity came up, I couldn't resist. I'm looking forward to growing these varieties and seeing what interesting colours and forms appear in the next generation.
With all this seed purchasing completed, I ran out of space in my Francheville seed storage boxes. Fortunately, Spotlight had them on sale for 30% off, so my husband picked up two more for me. Hopefully they'll last me a little while. I find these boxes perfect for seed organisation, keeping everything tidy and easy to find when sowing season arrives.
I'm pleased with this year's seed purchases and looking forward to getting everything sown over the coming months. There are plenty of old favourites returning to my garden, along with many new varieties and a few exciting breeding projects to explore. Now comes the hard part—finding the time to sow everything, and the space to grow it all!
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook.
Winter Rose Pruning In The Front Garden
Hello friends,
Rose pruning is one of those winter jobs that makes you feel as though spring is on the horizon. It's a chance to tidy up the previous season's growth, encourage healthy new shoots, and sometimes make some bigger decisions before the buds begin to burst in spring
I always begin pruning at the front of my garden, and work my way towards the backyard. As I come to each rose, I assess its health, remember how it performed over last summer, and decide whether it deserves to stay in my garden for another year. Once all those decisions are made, it's time to get to work.
I'm pleased to say that 'Cuppa Tea' rose performed very well after being planted last spring, producing strong, healthy blooms throughout the summer. With its naturally open growth habit, it didn't take long to prune into a neat vase shape, ready for another season of growth.
I'm equally as pleased with my other new rose from last year, 'Chawton Cottage'. It didn't grow as big as I hoped it would, so I'll supplement with compost and rose fertiliser this spring, and hope that it fills up the trellising at the end of the driveway this coming summer.
Three of the roses I've had for many years, 'Aotearoa', 'Happy Birthday', and 'Blackberry Nip' all continue to perform well, so all they required was some pruning to get them back into shape.
Unfortunately this wasn't the case with two other roses in the front garden 'My Girl' and 'Celebration'. Over the last couple of years they haven't performed well, and frequently get black spot and rust. Since they were taking up precious space in my front garden, I made the hard decision to pull them out and replace them.
As they were sitting side by side in the garden, and were quite far apart from each other, it gave me an opportunity to put a total of three roses in that space. The first space was set aside for my Gertrude Jekyll rose that has been the back garden for the past two years. It had gotten cramped in it's current position, so I moved it around to the front garden. I think it'll do very well in all day sun, and the space to stretch into a bigger space.
I then had two more spaces to fill in the front garden. I went shopping at our local Mitre 10 and came home with two David Austin roses, Desdemona and Eustacia Vye.
Desdemona has peachy pink buds which open to beautiful, white, chalice-shaped blooms, with a pinkish hue. It's a complex rose for me in terms of colour, and I welcome it's old world rose fragrance in the summer months.
Eustacia Vye is a pretty rose with soft, glowing apricot-pink blooms, with each flower being packed with delicately ruffled petals. She is now sitting in front of my Lucky Number dahlia with similar colouring, so I think they will go well together.
With both of these new David Austin Roses now in their new homes, the pruning of my front garden roses is now complete. I still have the back garden roses to prune, but they will get done when I do some rearranging of the backyard. I may have ordered too many new dahlia varieties over autumn and winter, and I now need to make space for them...
Have a wonderful day,
Julie-Ann
If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook.
July In The Garden - 2026
Hello friends,
July is the depth of winter here in Otago, New Zealand. Frosty mornings are a familiar sight, the garden has settled into its winter rhythm, and much of this month's work has been focused on preparing for spring. Although everything feels a little slower at this time of year, there are still plenty of signs that a new growing season is on its way.
Here's what July has looked like in my garden...
What's Flowering:
Surprisingly, the first yellow daffodils are already flowering in my backyard. Their foliage began emerging in early June, with the first blooms opening in early July. For now it's only a handful of flowers, but the main display will begin in August and continue right through until October.
There are still a few calendula flowering in the garden. Over the years I've found they provide flowers for almost the entire year, and their cheerful blooms always brighten the cold, dreary days of winter.
And finally, my young 'Perfume Princess' daphne has been flowering over the past couple of weeks, and its fragrance is intoxicating, filling the entire backyard on sunny still days.
What's Growing:
The lemons on my 'Meyer' lemon tree are beginning to ripen, and I'm looking forward to harvesting them over the coming weeks and putting them to good use in the kitchen.
I'm overwintering some sugar beet plants for seed saving, and they've taken all our winter frosts in their stride. They've remained completely hardy and continue to grow without any problems. It is still another 9 months until I can save seed from these plants, and no doubt I'll have to corral them to stop the seed heads from falling over in summer and autumn.
And finally, I gave my strawberry bed a tidy-up by weeding, removing
the older plants, and replanting it with fresh runners. In the process, I
increased the number of plants from 24 to 40, which should mean a much
bigger strawberry harvest this summer.
Nature Notes
Bird life is abundant at this time of year, with many birds searching for food throughout the garden. As always, the blackbirds have been busy digging up the lawn, vegetable garden, and flower beds in search of worms. Tauhou (also known as silvereyes or waxeyes) have been flitting between the few plants still in flower, searching for nectar, while a pair of pīwakawaka have made themselves at home, darting about in search of insects.
I even managed to photograph one of the pīwakawaka as it followed me around the backyard one sunny afternoon—a lovely reminder that even in the middle of winter, the garden is full of life.
I usually put bird feeders out in the front garden over winter, but with the recent arrival of bird flu in New Zealand, I decided to follow the advice of our local ecosanctuary, Orokonui, and take them down. Hopefully it won't be too long before it's safe to welcome the birds back to the feeders.
July has been surprisingly mild. We've had a total of 19 frosts, with temperatures ranging from –0.1°C down to –2.6°C. For the coldest month of the year, that's quite unusual. In a typical July we would normally expect at least a few frosts of around –6°C, along with plenty of mornings below –4°C.
Every day it seems I'm outside in the early evening throwing frost cloth over my citrus plants, wasabi plant, and seedings growing in my glasshouse. My citrus plants look like ghosts in the garden the next morning...
Our biggest weather event this month occurred on 5–6th of July, when a severe winter storm swept across the South Island. Many areas were blanketed in snow, but unfortunately the air wasn't quite cold enough here. Instead, we received torrential rain from the east, prompting MetService to issue a Red Heavy Rain Warning for Dunedin.
Whenever we get this type of weather pattern, it almost always leads to flooding in our backyard, as well as more widespread flooding across Dunedin. On the 5th of July we recorded 113 mm of rain in just 24 hours, followed by another 80.3 mm on the 6th of July.
As usual, the path leading to our woodshed flooded, so we built a temporary flood barrier using bags of potting mix to keep the water at bay. We keep meaning to fix the problem properly, but this particular weather pattern only comes along every few years, so it never quite makes it to the top of the to-do list.
I took a trip out in the pouring rain to check out our local stream. Luckily it stayed within its banks, even though the water was so swift that even the local ducks didn't want to go anywhere near it.
Luckily, the torrential rain eventually came to an end and the garden began to dry out. We've since enjoyed a run of crisp, sunny winter days, making it much easier to catch up on jobs around the garden.
As July draws to a close, the garden is slowly beginning to wake from its winter rest. My seed orders are on their way, and I can't wait to start filling the glasshouse with trays of seedlings. It won't be long before another growing season is underway.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook.
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