Life

The Casual Gardener: Why poppy love ought to endure beyond November

There’s no need to wait until next November to celebrate all that’s great about poppies

Disturb barren land and poppies will bloom in abundance. Picture by Chris Radburn/PA
Disturb barren land and poppies will bloom in abundance. Picture by Chris Radburn/PA Disturb barren land and poppies will bloom in abundance. Picture by Chris Radburn/PA

I IMAGINE most readers thought last weekend they’d bid good riddance to poppies for another year, but like a rogue exchange of gunfire after the armistice, I’ve decided to keep them on the agenda, for a short while at least.

The poppy’s adoption as a symbol of remembrance stems from the ravaged battlefields of Flanders, where for the four years up to 1918 tens of thousands of young men were slaughtered during an argument between king and kaiser. After the guns fell silent and those that had survived the ordeal retreated and went home, the former killing fields silently exploded the following summer as countless blood red poppies bloomed.

If you’re familiar with western Europe’s native Papaver rhoeas, then this display is less poignant or poetic phenomenon and more a natural occurrence. The seeds of the field poppy are especially durable and resilient and can remain viable for up to 1,000 years.

They also germinate in abundance if conditions are right, which is why they usually appear in masses covering entire fields. Barren, fallow ground is what they like but the flowers are fleeting, the crepe paper-like petals easily loosened from their anchor by a faint summer breeze. Though thankfully there’s plenty more where that came from as another stem straightens overnight and the bud unfurls.

The native poppy is an annual but one seedhead contains thousands of seeds, which means they will replenish themselves many times over once established, though the ground on which they grow may need to be disturbed – ie raked over – to ensure conditions are right. Poppies definitely aren’t plants to be utilised in formal, symmetrical patterns and are much better suited to wilder, freer planting schemes, and even growing among long grass.

Similar in habit, proliferation and the brevity of its flowers is Papaver somniferum – the opium poppy, which is also an annual. It is the milky fluid found in its unripe pod that, once processed, forms the basis of opiates such as heroin. This eastern Mediterranean native is also the source of the edible poppy seeds used for toppings on bread, and arguably its flowers (plum red and mauve in my garden) are even more attractive than its European counterpart.

With the opium poppy, you need to embrace its unpredictability and be tolerant of the plant’s knack of germinating in odd places, like cracks in walls and between paving slabs.

Easier to control in some regards is the oriental poppy (Papaver orientale). With a peak flowering period in June, these perennials are among the most robust, disease-resistant, self-sustaining plants you can have in your garden. And the flowers – again relatively short lived – are fantastic. The drawback is that they can be a little thuggish, flopping over on to other plants once they’re spent.

It’s still worth a punt, though, if you come across the likes of the deep scarlet 'Beauty of Livermore' (or P orientale 'Goliath Group' as it’s now known), the pale pink ‘Karine’, and the delicious purple of ‘Patty's Plum'.

Another highly desirable poppy that unlike all of the above isn’t part of the Papaver family, is meconopsis, which goes by the common name Himalayan poppy. Like the oriental poppy, mecanopsis too is a perennial, flowering year after year.

However, that’s where the similarity ends as meconopsis is not a plant for a novice gardener, as it prefers conditions untypical of a poppy, such as shaded area and a humus-rich, moist but well-drained soil. The additional effort is worth it, however, as its seductive cobalt blue flowers are among the gardener’s most-loved.