I was well into my 20s before I ever bought a plant. But no matter where I lived - rented house, flat, or finally, home of my own - I always had a garden. And each year it was different from the year before because the whole thing was made up of annuals grown from seed. Big brawny sunflowers, fragrant stocks and tobacco plants, wiry-stemmed poppies and cornflowers, rusty-orange calendulas, sugary candytuft, and nasturtiums and Canary creeper twining all over the place.
It was certainly no carefully-constructed symphony of colour - in fact it was quite the opposite, but it thrilled me to the bone. It was also cheering to know that every year, from a few packets of seed sown in spring, I'd have myself an entire garden for the summer and autumn. Of course, annuals are anathema to many gardeners who find their happy-splashy colours hard to stomach (and with hindsight I can see that my little jangly patch of brashness may have made more than one genteel passer-by slightly ill). Being easily available and ridiculously simple to grow has probably added to their odium. No cachet attaches itself to plants grown from seed that you can get in the hardware shop and that require no superior skill to cultivate.
But, as the great wheel of garden fashion turns slowly but unstoppably around, annuals are on the up again. This time round, they are grown in informal swathes of several varieties or are planted amongst perennials to give a bit of zing to sombre borders. Favoured sorts are the taller, more open ones that weave sociably in and out of their neighbours, unlike the highly-bred, short and fat types that sit four-square in park bedding schemes.
A new book by Graham Rice, Discovering Annuals, comes out just in time for the seed-sowing season. The gorgeously-illustrated and inspiring volume should finally convince any doubting gardeners that this obliging group of short-lived plants has a versatility unmatched by any other growing thing. Annuals can paint elegant and lacy pictures - as when the giant white tobacco plant, Nicoti- ana sylvestris, is interplanted with the tall, angular, purple Verbena bonariensis. Or they can make rivers of flame when the right combination of dark coreopsis, orange calendula, rudbeckia and nasturtium is grown together. Or they can form spots and pools of darkness, as with the cornflower, `Black Boy' and the leaves of red orache and the ornamental beet, `Bull's Blood'. Whether it's restful coolness (Ipomoea `Sky Blue' with Salvia farinacea `Blue Victory') or lightgiving sheets of optimism (yellowleaved feverfew planted in drifts) or any other mood you care to create, annuals have the power to do it.
Careful planting and planning are the keys to success (although with annuals there's always next year and the year after to start afresh and get it right). But seed companies, it has to be said, are not the most helpful by selling some plant varieties only in mixtures where a host of clashing colours are lumped together. Mixtures deprive the gardener of choice. As Graham Rice puts it: "Would you go into a shop and buy six mixed socks, chosen at random by somebody else?" It is the mixed-socks approach to growing annuals that Rice completely avoids in this stylish book. An introductory section discusses subjects such as colour, foliage, elegance (or lack of it), and suitable companions for annuals. Sixtyfour favourite plants are profiled then, including cottage garden biennials like foxgloves and hollyhocks, and perennials that flower in their first year - like linaria and the tall perennial lobelias. Finally, he deals with the practicalities of seed sowing and plant care, and the problem of changing plant names. A list of seed suppliers is included at the end. And if there's not enough meat there for the hungry annual grower, a website on the Internet has additional information, and a facility for emailing questions to the author.
What I like best about this book is how it stretches the brain, suggesting uses for annuals that wouldn't immediately occur to you . For instance, Rice recommends growing the Chilean glory vine (Eccremocarpus scaber) through spring-flowering shrubs that become dull masses of green in the summer (I can already see its startling orange tubes decorating my viburnum). And, believe it or not, eucalyptus can be grown as an annual. Imagine its silvery foliage entwined with climbing Ipomoea `Heavenly Blue', says Rice.
And while we all know about ornamental cabbages - their stiff forms brightening the autumn window box - how about using the curly red kale, `Redbor' or the red Brussels sprouts `Rubine' and `Falstaff' as bold accents in the summer border?
Growing annuals is exciting: not only do they provide you with a new palette every year to paint your garden, but there is the deep pleasure of growing them from seed. It never ceases to give me a kick when I see new seedlings arching up from the compost . From powerful little pips, minute grains and specks of genetic material come mighty plants: it's a terrible cliche, but so are many of the great truths of life.
Discovering Annuals by Graham Rice is published on March 25th by Frances Lincoln. €25 in UK. The Discovering Annuals website is at: http://discoveringannuals.com