In all the excitement of the RHS gardening week, we almost forgot that the beginning of May went by… which means a fresh new selection of food and flowers for the Seed Pantry Grow Club! This Month we have a beautiful range of Canna Flowers.
Canna flowers or also known as Canna lily (although not actually being a true lily) are stunning plants from the tropics that are related to banana plants! We have four varieties available this month: Canna ‘Black Knight’ has dark foliage and deep red flowers, ‘Pink and Roses’ is beautiful, ‘Verdi’ (AGM) is a tall big plant and will look great in city or rural gardens and large containers, and ‘Stuttgart’ with striking variegated leaves.
You can see the varieties in this month’s Grow Club with the link below:
https://www.seedpantry.co.uk/grow-club/discovery-box.html
Each plant grows to around 80cm, however, the Canna ‘Verdi’ can grow up to 1.5 metres tall for a real dramatic jungle effect! On top of their beautiful flowers, they are often grown for their magnificent foliage. So much so, that some people even clip the flowers to keep only the exotic leaves!
We thought as these are unusual flowers, We would put together a quick guide on how to plant and care for your own Canna plants! 🌱
- Now that the colder weather is (hopefully) behind us, you can start planting canna rhizomes outside, mid-May onwards, directly into borders or in containers. It can be very helpful for drainage if mix in a few handfuls of sand/grit to the compost you use.
- Plant the rhizomes 10-15cm deep and 50cm apart for tall varieties or 30cm apart for the medium size types. Place the rhizomes with the eyes, or growing points, facing up.
- Position your cannas in full sun for the best foliage colour and the greatest number of blooms. Or people do grow them just for the jungle-like foliage, so semi-shade works.
- Cover the rhizomes with compost, add a splash of water and that’s it! Wait for the magic to happen.
- For care, remove old flowers from the plant to keep them producing. Cannas are not full winter hardy, so you should lift and store in late autumn after the first frost or mulch well and leave in the ground in the South of the UK.
And that is everything you need to get you growing beautiful Canna flowers come August! 💐
Seed Pantry
