InTouch Magazine Articles Archive

Issue 21, August 2008

Gardening this Month

By Patricia Jordan. Author of "The Cyprus Garden" and "The Potted Garden"

Some of you may be old enough to remember the music hall ditty ‘I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch’. It always comes to mind when I am dead-heading my ‘Million Bells’ petunias. I am not really a fan of petunias but do realise their worth in planters and hanging baskets. ‘Million Bells’ are something else! I have a pink one which has been flowering since mid-April. It is a single plant in a large terracotta pot and has grown to at least a meter wide. It has had literally thousands of flowers since then. When I potted it up straight from the garden centre, I put it into fresh compost with some slow release fertiliser mixed in to it and I try to water it a little every day.

Petunias came originally from South America and belong to the potato family. They were introduced into Europe in the early 19th Century. ‘Million Bells’, also known as Calibracoa, were developed by Suntory, a Japanese firm, currently trying to perfect a really blue rose, but probably more famous for promoting golf tournaments than flowers!

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