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.

Tags: 2026, Glasshouse, Pansies, Pansy, Seed, Seed Sowing, Seeds, Winter

Hello friends,

I'd thought I'd share with you some of the plants flowering in my garden right now.

First up, my roses have finally started flowering, including my favorite, which is Blackberry Nip, and also the new rose in the back garden Gertrude Jekyll. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the first rose pictured...

My two new Hostas, Purple Heart and Sleeping Beauty, are looking amazing with new foliage.

And the pansies I grew from seed from Emerden Garden, Antique Shade and Mulberry Shade, are looking amazing now they are flowering. I'll let some set seed at the end of summer, and then that way they'll populate the garden in years to come.

My cosmos are now flowering as well. I have two new varieties this year Sunset Tones (Kings Seeds), and Strawberry Blonde (Emerden Garden), are now starting to flower as well.

I still have unknown ranunculus flowering in the back garden, and all my peonies are about to burst into flower soon too.

There's even more plants about to flower around my garden, but that'll have to wait until another blog post. I've even spotted some of my older dahlias beginning to form flower buds...

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2024, Calendula, Dahlias, Garden, Gardening, Hosta, Hostas, Pansy, Peony, Ranunculus, Rose, Roses, Spring, Spring Bulbs