Arthur Parkinson: The 12 top self-seeding annuals and biennials - Episode 257

grow, cook, eat, arrange with Sarah Raven & friends

Sarah Raven

Cook, Arranging, Home, Flower Arranging, Grow, Arrangements, Kitchen, Vegetables, Flowers, Gardener, Veg Garden, Lifestyle, Gardening, Leisure, Home & Garden, Food, Cooking, Arts, Eating, Eat, Growing, Planting, Produce, Garden, Sarah Raven

4.7 • 843 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The dream garden of low‑maintenance abundance is all about picking the plants that need hardly any input, just the lightest touch of editing, and they’ll give you months of shifting colour. In the third episode in this theme with Arthur, we dive into the self-seeding annuals and biennials that bring abundant colour to the garden with very little effort. From forget-me-nots and violas to cerinthe, cosmos and quaking grasses, they share their favourite ‘volunteer’ plants, how to manage th...

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by sarahraven.com, which is home to everything you need for a truly
0:06.3	beautiful and productive garden. You'll also find great and essential gardening kit and stylish,
0:12.9	lovely things to have in your house to bring the outside indoors, all inspired by the garden
0:19.8	and the house being tied together. There's also plenty of
0:23.1	garden inspiration, how-to videos and specialist growing guides. So head over to sarahraban.com
0:29.1	today to discover even more. Welcome to Gro Cook Eat Arrange, the podcast of me, Sarah Raven, and today I've got Arthur Parkinson with me, which is a great treat.
0:48.4	And so we're continuing our series on really low-maintenance gardening,
0:55.2	but low-maintenance, flowery and colourful gardening.
0:58.3	So this isn't about box, topery, etc., and you.
1:02.8	This is about floweriness, but things that are self-perpetuating.
1:07.2	So we've already done self-seeding perennials,
1:10.6	and so we thought we'd follow up with self-seeding annuals and biennials.
1:15.3	And these are plants that you put into the garden one year, and they will then pop up in lots of surprising and sometimes annoying,
1:31.6	hopefully beautiful spots that you weren't expecting them.
1:37.2	And they're rather wonderful for that. In books, you'll see them referred to as volunteers,
1:42.6	which is quite a nice way of looking at it. Anyway, hello, Arthur. We're going to do six each.
1:44.5	What would be in no particular order?
1:45.9	What would be your number one?
1:50.4	I'm going to kick off with something that I do associate with you because one of the first photos I ever saw of Perch Hill was of your farmhouse when you just had the fun cottage
1:56.7	garden and the lovely brick paths were there and you'd got gorgeous tulip Abu Hassan and I think
2:04.5	another one, West Point.
2:07.1	Yes.
	...

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