Timing of tulips in dahlias out

[Weepingwillows12]

I am quite new to gardening and haven't quite got it right in terms of interest all year around yet. I have a couple of May flowering plants like some aquilegia and geraniums but mainly it seems to all flower August so have quite a spell of no flowers.

My plan was to go for two seasons so looking at tulips, wallflowers, forget me nots in spring then my normal plants like dahlias, sweet peas, salvia, snapdragons for end of summer.

I have grown forget me nots and wallflowers from seed but I read they need to go in the ground now. I have tulip bulbs ready but they go in November (right?). However all my dahlias are still flowering and I thought I needed a frost to dig the tubers out.

Sorry that was long-winded but just wanted to ask if anyone else does similar and when do you tend to do the swapover? Also will my forget me nots and wallflowers be ok in pots for longer or do I need to somehow get them in now (not that there is any space currently)? Thanks for your help.

Watching this with interest, also a clueless new gardener!

Sounds like you are doing brilliantly OP, although you have hit the perennial problem of many gardeners, “eyes bigger than garden”.

I have been gardening for many years and have a rather laissez-faire attitude and it seems to work. So you forget me nots and wall flowers will be fine in pots (if you go to the garden centre in spring, you’ll find ready flowering pots or trays of them so they are clearly fine) and your dahlias will likely survive the winter if you cover them with mulch rather than digging them up.

That said, if you don’t have room for the tulips to go in, then leave the dahlias until the frost gets the foliage (you will wake up one morning to a collapsed soggy looking mess at the first hardish frost) and then dig up the tubers and store and plant the tulips in their place. Just keep the tulips somewhere cool, dark and frost free (away from rodents) and you can plant as late as December with no problems.
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As to gaps in the season so, I have been gardening for over 30 years and still trying to improve the display in my garden at certain times of year as it’s not as good as it could be.

Oh and for May, get some Alliums. Purple Sensation are wonderful. Try Wilko for cheaper bulbs.

The only thing I stick with date-wise is that the roses need to be pruned by Valentine's Day.

I needed this advice too! I am going radical and moving all late summer/ autumn pots to the front I think and sticking to ground only in the back garden to make more space for new and reduce watering. I basically haven’t seen my dahlias because it’s so wet in the garden at the moment!

I find my sweet peas are usually over by now, I regard them as an early to midsummer plant.

one way to cope with gaps is to go to a garden centre once a month all the year round. You’ve done well to have an August display. Garden writers complain that the average English garden is over by the end of June because people hit the garden centres at the first hint of good weather, buy whatever takes their fancy and fill their garden - and of course it’s all early season stuff that’s in flower

I think the reason I have stuff flowering now is everything stopped during the heatwave then seems to be recovering after the rain of the last month. But it's all a bit less successful than other years. My dahlias have less flowers and smaller but just glad they are going. My sweet peas are definitely done. Will collect seeds and pull up soon.

Am a bit of an intermittent gardener. Full time job and primary kids with lots of clubs etc means I just grab the odd few hours here and there where I can rather than regular sessions. Need plants you can ignore. Figure I can find a day and get all the bulbs in then ignore again.