Level up your lupins!
Lupins are a firm favourite of bees and look great in a cottage-style garden, or mixed up with grasses for a more modern feel. They have lovely star-shaped leaves and grow striking, tall spiked flowers that look impressive in any garden!
Lupins do best in full sun or light shade and prefer moist but well-drained soil.
You may find that pesky slugs are wreaking havoc on your lupins – it’s best to protect young plants from slugs early on by scattering slug pellets around your soil. Placing gravel, crushed shells or eggshells around your plant are also a good natural deterrent for slugs and snails.
It’s also worth planting other plants around your lupins that slugs don’t particularly like such as ferns.
You may also find that aphids are a problem which might affect the growth, you can get rid of these using any good bug killer sprays which can be found in the garden centre – speak to a member of the team for advice if you’re not sure which one’s best.
Lupins are a good companion plant as they can produce their own nitrogen which is emitted into the soil – this helps to feed other surrounding plants that need nitrogen like roses.
Deadhead your lupins when your blooms are looking past their best to make sure your plants flower throughout the summer. The flower will start dying off from the bottom of the bloom with the flowers turning into fuzzy seedpods. You want to make sure the plant’s energy is going to the next set of blooms rather than the seed pods of the dying flower stem, so cut the stalk quite low or to where you can see the next flower bud growing.
Avoid repotting or replanting your lupins if possible as they grow deep roots and tend not to cope well with having their roots disturbed. If you do need to replant, try to wait until they have died back in the autumn time before doing so.
