🌸 #QGrow May: Plant Now for Summer Colour
May is the month when the garden truly comes alive. The soil is warm, the days are long, and everything - from pollinators to plants - is bursting with energy. It’s the perfect time to plant for months of summer colour and to check in on some of our early-season favourites, including the much-loved sweetpeas and our allotment sweetpea tepee!
🌼 What to Plant Now for Summer Blooms
May is the perfect planting window for flowers that will bloom all summer long and support pollinators right through to autumn.
🌸 Annual Flowers for Summer Colour
These quick-growing blooms bring instant impact and are great for cutting too:
Cosmos – tall, airy, and pollinator-friendly; thrives in full sun.
Calendula (Pot Marigold) – edible, cheerful, and great for wildlife.
Zinnias – love warmth and keep blooming into late summer.
Nigella (Love-in-a-Mist) – self-seeds freely and adds delicate colour.
Cornflowers – hardy and brilliant for bees.
Volunteer tip: Mix annuals with perennials or native wildflowers to extend the flowering season and provide continuous nectar for insects.
🌿 Checking In: Our Sweetpeas
Remember those sweetpeas we sowed indoors back in January?
Now’s the time to:
Harden them off (move them outside during the day, indoors at night for about a week).
Plant them out once frost risk has passed, ideally by mid-to-late May.
Support them with canes or netting - or in our case, the #QGrow Sweetpea Tepee!
As they grow, keep pinching out the tips to encourage bushier plants and more blooms. And don’t forget to keep picking the flowers - the more you pick, the more they’ll produce!
✂️ Don’t Forget the Chelsea Chop
Late May is the perfect time for the Chelsea Chop - a pruning technique named after the Chelsea Flower Show.
Here’s how:
Cut back leggy or early-flowering perennials (like sedum, phlox, and asters) by about one-third.
This encourages:
More compact, bushier growth.
Longer flowering through summer.
Stronger, sturdier plants.
In community gardens like ours, it’s a brilliant way to keep displays looking fresh and manageable.
🐝 Wildlife Tip
When planting for summer blooms, think of nectar continuity - aim to have something flowering every week from now until October. Include a mix of:
Annuals for fast colour and pollen.
Perennials for structure and longevity.
Wildflowers to support native species.
And remember: leaving a few seed heads at the end of the season provides food and shelter for birds and insects.
🌍 Why Get Involved
May is a month of promise - every seed and plant you put in now becomes the colour, scent, and buzz of summer.
By volunteering or joining one of our #QGrow sessions, you’ll help:
Create vibrant, wildlife-friendly spaces across Quorum Park.
Learn new gardening skills from planting to pruning.
See visible results as the allotment and garden come into full bloom.
👉 Join us at #QGrow this May as we build our summer displays, tend the sweetpea tepee, and make the most of the Chelsea Chop!
📸 Don’t forget to share your photos using #QGrow – we love seeing what’s growing across Quorum Park!
