At one time they were all the rage and were sitting pretty in gardens and parklands everywhere, but you’d be hard pressed to find some of these 10 throwback plants today – unless you grow them yourself that is. #gardening
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NewsTranscript
00:00So, in today's video I'm just going to take you through some of the old style plants that
00:19I'm bringing back this year. These are plants that would have been about in the 70s and
00:2480s, and these are Lunaria or Honesty, or probably better known as Silver Pennies because
00:33of their seed pods. And I'll just take you through and show you all the different things
00:37I'm growing. First up we have some Honesty here, and this is Biennial, and you can just
00:47see it here, it's about three to four foot tall. These were grown from seed last year
00:52and then planted out overwintered fine in the ground. And these would have been very
00:57popular back in the 70s and 80s. And they're grown, the purple flowers are lovely and they've
01:05been flowering since early March. They're not grown for the flowers, even though these
01:10are a B-magnet, so they've got multiple benefits. They're grown for the seed pods. The seeds
01:19are contained within these large, kind of lunar-like pods, that when you peel them away,
01:27have this pearlescent sheen to them. And they're great for drying, great for crafts, or even
01:34just for having dried flowers in the house. So I have to say, this is my first time ever
01:41growing them. And as you see how we bee over at the other one there, and the bees have
01:47been regular visitors since they started flowering. So I'm expecting them to go to
01:52seed pretty soon. And if I just turn the camera, you can see there one behind. Here we have
02:00another old-time favourite that's kind of gone out of favour, and this is wallflowers.
02:06So these have a lovely clove kind of vanilla-y scent, quite light, but on a warm day they
02:14really do smell amazing. These are an all-out bulletproof one as well, slugs haven't touched
02:18them. They were planted out last year, have overwintered fine, can survive frost, same
02:26as the honesty, no problem at all. And they've been flowering since before Christmas. The
02:32yellow ones have been one of the first to open. Then if you see over here, we have rusty
02:37kind of coloured ones. Then another one there. And they also come in like almost an orange-brown
02:48colour, which will... I see some darker ones there, and a kind of burgundy as well. So
02:54I think there's still a lot of them to open, but they are really long flowering. These
03:00have been going now for, since Christmas really, so that's at almost four months, and they're
03:06still flowering away. So another great choice for some late-winter, early-spring colour.
03:12There's another one here, a rusted orange colour. I'll just take you over to another
03:21old favourite right beside it here. These are not in flower yet, probably another month
03:26or so, but you can see them already forming. I have quite a few of these, and these are
03:31Sweet William. They produce masses of colourful flowers. And again, these were grown from
03:38seed last year, planted out, survived the winter no problem. No bother with slugs or
03:43snails. They've done absolutely fine. So there's a lot to be said for biennials. You do the
03:51hard work and it does the growing the first year, and then you get the flowers the next.
03:57Here, although it looks like nothing yet, this is a calendula that's coming back, and
04:01sometimes calendula will come back, not all the time. It's a short-lived perennial, but most
04:07people treat it as an annual, and it reseeds itself very readily, but you can just gather
04:16the seed heads too and just grow them indoors. But again, very hardy, can survive the frost,
04:23can be winter soon, like almost everything here. And just two more old-fashioned plants
04:31down here. These are oxeye daisies, so that's the big white daisies you would normally see
04:36on the roadside, kind of growing wild. They're native, so these are the cousins of the tiny
04:41daisies that you see in the grass, much, much bigger. They should flower well, well into the
04:50autumn. Here we see a head here, and it's already flowered this year. And just down below them,
05:00I've just seen a few heads starting to come on these tiny little things, and these are
05:05forget-me-nots, which are great. And then amongst them too, you can see these are some
05:10cornflowers, beautiful blue plant, are ones that have overwintered. These are miniature
05:20cornflowers, so actually the other ones in there will get maybe three times this size.
05:25These are about a foot long. I want to keep them to the front of the border.
05:31I just have one more little tiny flower starting to open there, and this is pheasancy,
05:36which is a native flower, but it's on the endangered list at the moment, and so I thought I
05:42would grow it. It's supposed to be good for pollinators. There's another one down there.
05:48Lovely wee red flower, tiny flowers, but really pretty. These are some sweet pea that I've potted
05:56up. I was growing them in a tray, which is a mistake, because they have big long roots and
06:01they need a lot of room for the roots to go down. So if you are on and on growing sweet pea from seed,
06:10I would suggest planting it on the pots, big long pots, or direct sowing it. It's another
06:17hardy one. It can survive frost and prefers cooler temperatures. If you grow it indoor,
06:23it'll get very leggy, and it's just better to keep it cool. Very windy today, so you hear
06:30banging, that's what it is, and here I'll just show you quickly what I'm growing since the last
06:35time we were in only a week ago now. Loads of different types of cosmos here. The carnations
06:41is one of the ones as well, which you don't see many people growing these days. Now you still get
06:47them in the florists and amongst bouquets and that, but they're just not as popular as they used to be,
06:52and then on over here we've got some stock rudbeckia, some more cosmos, and here we have
07:03more down here. These are the blue cornflower seeds, seedlings. So these are coming up now.
07:09I could move these outside, no problem. You can put them in the ground now and they would do fine,
07:14but I just want to bring them on a bit further so they don't get lost in amongst the bigger plants.
07:19These are another brilliant plant. You can winter sow them, you can spring sow them.
07:25They're hardy, they'll survive frost, and now when I say survive frost, they'll survive
07:31Irish frost, which is usually we don't get really, really cold winters, so
07:39at most it's usually minus five, something like that, and that's centigrade.
07:45And then on down here, I'll just show you quickly as well, we have some purple broccoli and the green
07:54broccoli has now sprouted, so the two of them's now up, which is great, just growing in the greenhouse.
08:02I also, they're not here, but they're out there, some money sunflowers too that have popped up.
08:08There's been quite a lot of movement and we have a week now of sunny weather,
08:13hopefully that one will die down, and then that should bring everything on a bit.
08:20And finally on this tour, we have the Godisha, which is another very hardy plant. It's an annual, so
08:30you would have to sow it every year, but these are from seeds I collected from last year's.
08:37I think the name's been changed to Clarkia, but most people would know them as Godisha if you
08:42know about plants. These have been out since early February, no problem with the cold temperatures,
08:50just grew at their own pace, and these are now ready for transplanting on the ground.
08:56They're very, very healthy looking as you can see, just masses of beautiful flowers,
09:02no fuss plants, and I just don't know why they haven't come out, and as you can see,
09:07they naturally branch as well. Why they've come out of favour, I don't know, but
09:13you can see their little stems, wooden stems coming out. So they're fantastic plants,
09:20flower for months on end, and looking forward to getting them in the ground now.
09:42you