Advertisement
Home Outdoor Outdoor Front Garden Ideas

7 old-fashioned flowering plants you need in your garden

Granny was right- these are gorgeous!
Loading the player...

A flowering garden is a thing of joy and with these old-fashioned favourites, it’s not as difficult as you’d imagine to cultivate these beautiful old-fashioned blooms.

Advertisement

If these flower varieties make you think of your grandmother, it’s because classic cottage garden blooms have always been popular. Perhaps it’s because they are hardy, simple to grow and, once established, with regular watering will pop up to delight you year in, year out.

What’s more, these varieties are enjoying a renaissance in our gardens as we spend more time at home to care for them. Give them a go and you might find you’ve inherited Grandma’s green thumb.

 1. Hydrangea

Nanna’s favourite and easy to grow from cuttings, hydrangeas need plenty of water daily. A position in full sun-to semi shade helps to avoid these summer flowering beauties getting hit too hard by brutal midsummer sun.

It may be old fashioned, but new varieties of hydrangeas are released every year.

Advertisement

Hydrangeas are a classic flower. Landscaper Matt Leacy says they’re especially suited to Hamptons-style gardens.

(Credit: Image: Getty)

2. Sweet pea

Delicate and sweetly scented, plant sweet peas around St Patrick’s Day (17th of March), the saying goes, for a bumper crop in Spring. Support with a trellis, climbing frames or against your fence as the tendrils grow thicker. Pick flowers as they appear and more will follow.

3. Larkspur

A classic cottage garden favourite, this old-fashioned bloom is more delicate than its bigger brother delphinium and looks great planted en masse. Flowering in spring and summer, once planted it will reseed itself and reappear each year.

An elegant flowering plant with tall stems of blooms, larkspur colours range from white through soft pinks and mauve to pale and darker blues.

(Credit: Image: Getty)
Advertisement

4. Poppies

Who can go past a poppy? Enjoying a resurgence in popularity, commercial growers are experimenting with size and colour blocking to produce some incredible blooms. In your garden, their gently nodding heads blowing in the breeze like paper to add a bright pop of colour from late winter into spring and summer.

Plant poppies in drifts in a sunny position.

(Credit: Photo: David Hahn)

5. Love-in-a-mist

Now this is an old-fashioned lady. Nigella damascena produces delicate star-like pale blue and white blooms atop ephemeral-leafed stems, in contrast to its hardy nature and strongly scented seeds that can be harvested and dry roasted for salads and curries.

Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena).

(Credit: Image: Getty)
Advertisement

6. Hollyhocks

Another cottage garden classic, the hollyhock adds wow factor to your garden, growing striking flower-covered stems up to 3 metres tall.

Great to add height to your garden, they’re easy to grow and flower in full sun.

Hollyhocks can grow up to 3 metres tall!

(Credit: Image: Getty)

7. Rudbeckia

Rudbeckias or cone flowers are tall, bright yellow flowers, similar to an Echinacea with a black centre, surrounded by soft petals. Also known as “black-eyed Susans”, Nick Vale of Sydney’s Garden Life is a fan – “I love rudbeckias!” he says, “They work well planted all in a big drift, then you can interplant with other flower like lilies, all growing up on top of them.”

Advertisement

Rudbeckia bring a burst of sunshine into your garden.

(Credit: Image: Getty)

Related stories


Advertisement
Advertisement