I remember the first time the Californian poppy stole my heart. I was weeding out the Bermuda buttercup, Oxalis pes-caprae, in the rock garden at New York Botanical Garden. This is one of those difficult weeds: it's easily pulled up, sure, but it leaves behind small, round bulbils that spring merrily back into life. Their saving grace is that the leaves are nice to nibble on – they have a pleasant, lemon sherbet flavour.
So there I was, weeding and nibbling, plugged into my Walkman with Caetano Veloso singing Nine Out Of Ten. These details are etched into my memory, for as Caetano hit his stride singing "walking down Portobello Road", the sun came out and a whole bank of Eschscholzia californica opened their flowers. They had been used as an under-planting for Echinacea paradoxa, a lemon-yellow cornflower. It's a winning combination: the echinacea rises just above, its petals brilliantly set off by the orange of the poppy. Both love sun, free-draining soil and are covered with butterflies and bees for as long as they flower. The cornflower grows to about 65cm high; the poppies around 30cm or so. It was one of those moments when you just have to sit and stare at the grace of nature.
Eschscholzia are annuals or short-lived perennials that are found naturally growing along the west coast of America. Yes, the name is hard to pronounce: it's one of those you have to take a bit of a run at and miss out the c's (eh-SHOLTZ-ee-uh). There are numerous lovely cultivars, from the pale E. californica 'Alba', which open creamy and fade white, to the brilliant scarlet flowers of 'Red Chief'. There are many mixes and doubles (the latter are less good for bees and foraging insects because they have less pollen).
It's best to sow E. californica direct. Like many annual poppies, they do best in disturbed, poor soils and are brilliant for scattering along the edge of paths or under the base of bare-stemmed shrubs. The pink forms, such as 'Bridal Bouquet' or 'Thai Silk Appleblossom', work well under roses or around the base of a wisteria. Those sorts of dry, hot patches with little soil are ideal for California poppies. The trick is to sow in succession from May to June once the soil has warmed up. This will keep them flowering into autumn and, if the winter is mild, some might flower next spring. Sprinkle the seed on the surface of the soil, press them down lightly, but don't bury them because they need light to germinate. Water in well and leave alone. You can thin the seedlings if you get a dense spot, but mostly you can leave them be.
Alys on… deadheading
I went away for a week and came back to find a garden gone to seed. Most of this is good. The forget-me-nots, landcress and rocket will do the hard work for me. As the seedpods start to open, I uproot the plants, shake like mad in the spots I want them next year and don't think much more about it. I would have preferred the radishes to hang on a bit longer – I'd eaten only three – but a spell of hot weather tricked them into thinking it was the end of summer, so they went to seed.
This all served to remind me that if you want a seamless display of flowers, you need to deadhead. Deadheading prolongs flowering, because the poor plant is desperately trying to set seed. If you remove the flower and don't let it go to seed, it will try time and time again, resulting in more flowers for you (and the bees). Violas, pansies, marigolds, petunias, field poppies, roses, geraniums, delphiniums, valerian and sweet rockets are some of the many that will keep throwing them out as long as you nip off the old flowers (with roses, cut back to the first head cluster with five leaflets). But if you want to collect seed (or let nature do some selfseeding), you have to stop in time to allow the plant to set seed.