Cost-effective bedding plants for spring gardening

While the particularly green-fingered may have already carefully planned, purchased and started planting their gardens for spring, you haven’t missed your chance if you’re trying to save money and your beds are still bare.

From petunias and pansies to lobelias and busy lizzies, if you’re looking to make the most of the (hopefully) warmer weather with some spring gardening, there’s a whole array of affordable bedding plants to consider that are perfect for cultivating at this time of year.

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Antirrhinum

from £2

Also known as snapdragons, antirrhinums are easily recognised by their architectural flower spikes, unusually shaped blossoms and lengthy flowering time. Available from as little as £2 as seeds or around £10 for a tray of six young plants, these impressive flowers can easily be bought on a budget. Found in an assortment of vivid colours, antirrhinums can grow as upright, dwarf or trailing plants depending on the variety. Dwarf plants are best suited to smaller beds, borders, and patio pots, while taller snapdragons make for excellent cut flowers and are ideal for giving extra height at the back of borders. And if you’re looking to give the wildlife in your garden a helping hand, antirrhinums are also particularly popular with bumblebees, providing a fantastic source of nectar in addition to their beautiful blooms.

Busy lizzies

from 95p

Busy lizzies (Impatiens) are also excellent late spring bedding plants, producing impactful blooms in a range of distinctive colours including yellows, reds, purples and whites. Ideal for shady areas, busy lizzies possess several characteristics that make them the perfect bedding plant: a very long flowering time, a bushy mound-like shape, and the ability to quickly spread, providing excellent ground cover in beds, borders or for rapidly filling patio planters. Plus, impatiens’ blooms will easily last through the whole of summer right up until the first frosts of the year. And with a packet of seeds costing just 95p or a tray of twelve juvenile plants costing as little as £10, these garden border classics are a fantastically cost effective way to add some colour to your garden.

Cosmos

from £2.40

For attracting bees and butterflies, there are few flowers more adept than cosmos, whose enormous saucer-shaped blooms sit gracefully on slender stems with lots of pollen for pollinating insects. Their fern-like foliage adds texture to bedding schemes and looks great in a more natural cottage-style bed or border – and with seeds costing as little as £2.40 a packet, they’re ideal for an affordable garden scheme. Their flowers are found in brilliant hues of yellow, orange, red, pink and white. As half-hardy annuals, cosmos are great for planting at the beginning of summer, since they won’t withstand the lower temperatures earlier in the year; they’ll then bloom plentifully until at least mid-autumn.

Geranium 

From £2.40

These resilient, sun-loving plants are best suited to hot, dry locations and flower between late spring and early summer. Known for their distinctly herbaceous scent geraniums are highly adaptable plants that come in trailing, climbing and upright varieties, ideal for beds, borders, pots, hanging baskets or troughs. Typically found in shades of pink, red, and white, geraniums usually cost around £2.40 for seeds and around £10 for a tray of young plants, so they’re a good option for filling out summer beds at a reasonable price. And their hardiness means that if you bring your geranium inside by autumn, they’ll continue to bloom throughout the winter months as long as they have enough light.

Sweet peas

From £2.00

Another pretty bedding plant that’s perfect for a cottage garden, sweet peas make for a wonderful addition to any spring planting scheme; seeds start from just £2 (around £9 for three juvenile potted plants) so they’re a practical choice when it comes to price as well. Plant them at the back of beds or borders and allow them to scramble up trellises, wigwams, or nets for maximum impact, reaching a height of up to 1.8 metres (6 feet). Or if you’re aiming for ground cover in front of beds and borders consider dwarf varieties of the plant. Either way, sweet peas are fantastic late spring bedding plants with their pleasant aroma and broad range of colours. They’re also frost hardy, meaning they’ll easily survive even the chilliest of spring nights, enduring temperatures as low as -4 degrees.

Petunia

From £2.40

Recognised for their wonderful trumpet-shaped blooms, petunias can be found in a veritable rainbow of colours and patterns including stripes and picotees (petals with edges of a different colour to the base colour)). They start from just £2.40 for a packet of seeds, or around £10 for a tray of plants from B&Q. These trailing or upright half-hardy annuals look great pouring from hanging baskets, window boxes, and pots, or planted en masse in beds and borders. And if you’re looking to add a splash of purple to your scheme, petunias are a great choice since they come in tones of mauve, lilac-blue, and deep royal purple.

Pansies

From £2.40

Pansies are a colourful and incredibly easy-to-grow cultivar that provides long-lasting blooms from late May right through to the first frosts of the year. They thrive in wet, humus-rich, well-drained soil and grow best in either full sun or light shade. They come in a variety of colours ranging from pure white to deep purple, and are ideal for cheering up baskets, pots, troughs, and border displays with wide ground cover. And if you’re fastidious with your deadheading, spring pansies will keep on blooming across the whole of summer and even into autumn, making a £2.40 investment in a seed packet (or £11 for an assorted tray) even better value. 

Lobelias

From £2.40

Lobelia's delicate creeping blossoms make lovely thick cascades of colour in hanging baskets and pots, while their upright forms are ideal for edging beds and borders. Easy to cultivate, lobelia's tiny blossoms last for an impressively long time, and look especially nice when mixed with other bedding plants. Available in a range of blue, purple and white colours, lobelias are ideal for cool-coloured planting designs and cost around £14 for a mixed tray or £2.40 for a packet of seeds. 

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