Many Biennials Flower at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Annuals are plants with a short life but a merry one. In the space of a few months they grow, flower and die, leaving the ground free for further cultivation, if necessary, and for other plants. Biennials are plants which must be renewed annually from seed, since they die after they have flowered and set seed. In this they resemble annuals, but biennials take over a year to complete their cycle of growth. Seed sown one year will produce plants that will flower the next year, ripen their seed, and die before the second winter.

MANY BIENNIALS flower in early and midsummer, thus usefully filling an awkward gap that can occur between the spring and summer flowers. Like annuals, they are temporary plants which should be pulled up and put on the compost pile when they have finished flowering. Also, as with annuals, though it's easy enough to save seed of most kinds it is usually impossible to prevent cross-fertilization of different varieties, as a result of which home-saved seed produces only a mongrel population. The distinction between annuals, biennials and herbaceous perennials is not always clear-cut since sometimes varieties of one group can be treated as if they belonged to one of the other groups; hollyhocks (Alcea), for example, can be grown as annuals, biennials or short-lived perennials. However, to be sure of a regular succession of biennials it is necessary to sow seed every year at the correct season.

Pinch out the growing tip of plants such as fuchsias in order to encourage the growth of side-shoots and a bushy habit. Deadheading is the removal, of flower heads as soon as they have died. Perennials and biennials will flower at least once a season if you deadhead them as soon as the first flowers have died.