Perhaps you sowed some biennials in modules in the greenhouse back in spring and summer? If so, and if your seedlings have grown to be good, strong, small plants, then it’s time to plant them out in the garden.
You’re letting them loose and into the open ground now so they can get going at this earliest of opportunities, ensuring their root systems are settled, happy and robust before winter comes, and before they need to flower next year.
Leave Iceland poppies until spring though, as they don’t like wet winter feet. Once sown, biennials produce foliage in their first year before flowering in their second, so a bit of patience is required. Annuals may seem like more of an instant fix, flowering a few months after sowing in spring, but biennials are so worth it, and some of the most fantastic plants around.
They’ll hardily sail through winter before looking a little downtrodden come early spring – to help plants along give them a little trim and a mulch before they get going. There are benefits to biennials, apart from being superbly pretty plants, they appear in late spring and early summer just when you’re looking for a gap filler to cover ground.