Byline: John Humphries
Poppy MENTION poppies and people almost automatically think of fields of opium poppies, Papaver somniferum, waving lazily as they are trampled underfoot by our boys serving in Afghanistan.
What are among the cheapest and most cheerful of garden plants have had a particularly bad press lately.
The Oriental poppy is the largest to grow if your garden has moist, relatively fertile soil in full sun, although the flowering period is brief and the leaves will die back to leave ugly gaps in the border. This can be circumvented by planting, immediately behind the poppy, HOME TRUTHS John Humphries But the scarlet Oriental poppy with a splash of black at its throat remains among the loveliest of herbaceous border perennials while its annual cousins, the red Flanders Poppy and orange cheap ed hardy Californian Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) are even more brilliant, self-seeding prolifically even in the most unfertile (but always well-drained) sunny corner of the garden.
I regard poppies, whether perennials or annuals, as "bridging plants". After spring flowering there's an interregnum, before the herbaceous border bursts into colour at the beginning of July. Poppies, along with border geraniums, are among the plants that fill this vacuum.
perhaps Gypsophila paniculata or Limonium whose sprawling habit will plug the holes.
Support is essential for the red Oriental poppy to produce its very best. One shower of rain is all that is needed to flatten the blooms. Left alone most produce new plantlets, or can be propagated by root cuttings in late summer early autumn, even the smallest piece of root making a new plant.
Oriental poppies come in shades of red, orange, pink, almost mauve, and white although all are descendants of a wild species native to Turkey.
Even more colours were once available, mostly wishy-washy, none able to hold a candle to the original scarlet Papaver orientale with its black blotch. "Ladybird", "Allegro Vivace", and "Picotee" are still the most superior of the hybrids.
But there is one poppy gardeners will almost kill for! The blue Himalayan Poppy, Meconopsis betonicifolia, is the greatest of garden centre impulse purchases. Few can resist its charms - and most wind up disappointed when it never flowers again.
Because it is monocarpic, flowering only once, never buy unless it already has an offset, a sure sign its progeny will flower next year.
Growing the Himalayan poppy from seed requires the patience of Job, taking four or five years before you have a clump from which it is safe to allow a few blooms to flower. A sandy, peaty soil very similar to that suitable for rhododendrons, moist and in dappled shade is the Himalayan poppy's preferred location. By far the deepest blue of the lot is Meconopsis sheldonii.
Those lucky enough to have a clump can propagate by division every two or three years in early autumn or early spring. But never transplant into alkaline soil.
But there is one member of the Meconopsis family that is much nearer to home and easier to grow. The yellow Welsh poppy (Meconopsis cambrica) is native to Wales thriving beside rocky streams, on old walls, even in the lee of great slabs of mountain rock.
Yet its popularity with gardeners has waned, possibly because it requires the sharpest possible drainage.
Flowering from June to August, it is a long-lived perennial, its delicate yellow combining well wi
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