The single most common question we are asked is also the simplest: when should a hanging basket actually go up? In Britain the honest answer depends on two things — the last frost in your area, and whether your basket will hang somewhere sheltered or somewhere fully exposed. Get those two right and everything else is straightforward.
The short answer
Summer baskets planted with tender bedding — petunias, surfinias, fuchsias, lobelia, trailing geraniums — should not hang outside unprotected until the risk of frost has passed. Across most of England and Wales that is mid-May. In Scotland, the north of England and anywhere at altitude, wait until the very end of May or the first week of June. Hardy planting, by contrast, can go out almost any month of the year.
Spring: March to May
Spring is the gentlest season for a basket and the most forgiving to plant. Cool nights and steady rain do most of the work for you, and the colour palette suits a British doorway beautifully — soft, pale, a little old-fashioned.
- Primula and polyanthus — reliable early colour, happy in cold soil
- Muscari and dwarf narcissi — planted as bulbs in autumn, in flower by March
- Violas and pansies — the most weather-proof flower in the British garden
- Variegated ivy and vinca — trailing structure while everything else fills out
Summer: June to August
This is the season baskets were invented for. Once frost has gone, tender bedding grows at extraordinary speed — a basket planted in the third week of May will be spilling over its rim by the middle of June and at full volume through July and August.
- Surfinia and trailing petunia — the workhorse of the British summer basket
- Fuchsia — perfect for part-shade and a partly covered porch
- Trailing geranium (pelargonium) — drought-tolerant and forgiving in full sun
- Bidens, calibrachoa and lobelia — the filler colour between the larger blooms
“Plant a summer basket in the third week of May and you will get fifteen weeks of flower from it. Plant it in July and you will get five.”
Autumn: September to November
Most people take their basket down in September and leave the bracket empty until next year. It is the biggest missed opportunity in British gardening. Autumn planting is tough, long-lasting and reads far richer than summer bedding — bronzes, deep rose, plum and copper against a stone or brick wall.
- Cyclamen — flowers straight through the first cold snaps
- Ornamental kale and cabbage — architectural, and it improves as it gets colder
- Heuchera — foliage in amber, caramel and burgundy that holds for months
- Autumn-flowering heather — quietly reliable in exposed positions
Winter: December to February
A winter basket is the one that gets the most compliments, because so few doorways have one. The trick is to stop thinking about flowers and start thinking about evergreen structure with points of colour set into it.
- Skimmia — glossy leaves and red winter berries
- Dwarf conifer — the evergreen spine of the arrangement
- Hellebore — the Christmas rose, in flower when nothing else is
- Winter-flowering pansy and silver-leaved cineraria for brightness
A note on frost, wind and exposure
Frost is not the only thing that kills a basket early. Wind dries a basket out faster than sun does, so an exposed corner or a first-floor bracket needs either tougher planting or more frequent watering. A basket under a porch roof gets almost no rain at all, which surprises people — it will need watering by hand even in a wet British week.
If keeping track of all of that sounds like work, that is precisely why we built the seasonal subscription. A freshly planted basket arrives at the right moment for the season, ready to hang, and the tired one goes away. You get the doorway without the diary.
Written by The Perenna Bloom Team
