One year wonders

It’s common to decide you want to stick with permanent planting to make your gardens lower-maintenance, but to rule out all those shorter-lived plants is to miss out.

Structure in a garden comes from trees, hedges and shrubs, with perennials - those flowering border plants - providing the eye-catching spectacle year after year.

Annuals, on the other hand, last just one season. But their short lifespan means they waste no time in growing and producing their flowers. This makes them very useful for prettying-up temporary gaps.

Some come from the wait for young shrubs to grow to full-size. If you have a space to fill for a year or two, annuals are an easy low-cost option that will naturally disappear when no longer needed.

Gaps can also occur because earlier-flowering plants have finished, whether that be perennials or spring bulbs. Annuals usually have small root systems, which means they can fit in between those enduring plants.

The holy grail of gardening is to have borders that always look interesting.

Filling your borders with evergreen shrubs is one way to do this, but it won’t vary through the year and won’t have a lot of flowers.

The other option is the goal of many a keen gardener: succession planting. Set up your borders as a relay race, with plants of varied flowering times mingled in together. The joys of spring followed by summer stunners; autumn colour into winter interest.

Annuals can give a helping hand when your perennial plans have left you with an interlude of blooms, maximising colour and interest in your borders.

The use of annuals in vegetable patches and allotments has come back in favour as gardeners look to attract the pollinators necessary for many edible plants to form their crops.

A lot of annuals also draw in other beneficial insects, which keep surrounding planting healthy.

Ammi, Cosmos, Zinnia, Calendula, Tagetes and sunflowers are among those that draw in the likes of the ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies that eat pesky aphids. No need for chemicals, or indeed any effort from you the gardener.

And although billed as ‘one-year plants’ a good number of annuals self-seed to give you ‘free’ plants the next year and beyond.

• This May selected cut flower plants are 5 for £10 at Katie’s Garden Plant Centre

Cosmos give you your money’s worth, flowering right up to the frosts - just keep snipping out the old blooms.

Katie’s Garden is growing the beautifully lacey Orlaya for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

The beautiful blue blooms of the cornflower are a welcome addition to sunny borders.