How to grow oriental poppies

Oriental poppies are a mixture of five or six different species. As a result they vary in height, colour and form. However all provide tissue-paper flowers with pepper-pot middles before most other summer-flowering perennials open so they are extremely useful to the gardener. Their sumptuous flowers only shine for ten days or so and they don’t give a long-lasting display, but despite that these easy-to-grow divas deserve a place in every garden.

Saga Home Insurance provides cover that goes beyond what you might expect. For more information and to get a quote click here.

How to grow Oriental poppies

Oriental poppies are a doddle to grow. They can be grown in pots or in the ground, and are easy to care for throughout the year as long as they have sandy, free draining soil and a sunny position. Deadheading Oriental poppies will prolong flowering.

Where to plant Oriental poppies

Poppies will thrive in a sunny spot and prefer sandy, free-draining soil. However, they can be grown in clay soils if it’s improved by digging in some horticultural grit to make it more open.

Oriental poppies are very long-lived and have deep roots. This makes them difficult to eradicate, so only plant them where you want them. Otherwise you’ll never get rid of them.

How to plant Oriental poppies

Growing Oriental poppies n the ground

Oriental poppies are undemanding, easily grown stalwarts of the flower border. They prefer an open, sunny position on reasonably drained soil.

To plant, dig a hole that is deeper than the pot and mix in some general purpose fertiliser granules with the excavated soil. Add some of the soil mix back to the hole and place the poppy in the centre of the hole, ensuring that it sits at the same level as the surrounding soil. Fill the hole with the remaining soil, firm in and water.

Growing Oriental poppies in a container

Although most gardeners grow oriental poppies in the soil, they can be grown in pots. Choose deep containers as poppies have long tap roots and fill with a mixture of John Innes No.3 and a soil-less compost. If the roots are too damp they are likely to rot, so stand them on pot feet and avoid placing a saucer under the pot.

Oriental poppy care

Feeding

Give the plant a boost with a general purpose plant food and mulch with bark chippings to retain moisture. Fresh growth will soon appear, while some varieties will respond with a second flush of flowers later in summer.

Pruning and cutting back Oriental poppies

When flowers start to drop their petals, snip out the entire stem so the plant puts all its energy into making more flowers and not into producing seeds. After the last flower fades, cut the entire plant back hard to within 7cm of the ground.

Dividing Oriental poppies

As plants mature, the centre of clumps can die. However, it’s easy to revitalise plants in this state during spring. Prise them from the ground with a fork and divide into several smaller pieces, throwing away any dead bits. Replant as soon as possible and water.

Propagating Oriental poppies

These tap-rooted plants can only be reproduced properly by root cuttings. Once they have died down completely (August to September in most cases) lift them and remove a section of root. Replant the rest and give it a good watering.

Cut your root into one-inch sections making a slanting cut at the lower end and a flat cut at the top. Then immerse your cuttings (slanted end down) into a tray of gritty compost with the flat end level with the compost. After two months leaves should appear and these rooted pieces can be potted up individually. You can use this technique with eryngiums and verbascums, but their later dormant period means lifting these in winter.

Do Oriental poppies spread?

Oriental poppies do not readily spread, although the plants can get large once established and their tap root makes them difficult to remove.

What to grow oriental poppies with

Most oriental poppies are summer dormant and they die back to nothing soon after flowering - leaving an unsightly gap in the border.

There are two ways round this problem. You can grow them with later-flowering asters, heleniums and rudbeckias: these plants will hide the gap the poppies leave.

Or you can plug the gap by adding short-term fillers like penstemons, cosmos, or dahlia. Plant these close to the poppies in June.

Nepeta 'Six Hill’s Giant' is also a good companion because this billowing plant flows over the gap.

Saga Home Insurance provides cover that goes beyond what you might expect. For more information and to get a quote click here.

Best Oriental poppies to grow

'Beauty of Livermere'
'Beauty of Livermere' (now listed under Goliath Group) makes a statement with its light-green foliage and post office box red flowers and this erect, poised plant never looks coarse.

'Raspberry Queen'
Once described by nurseryman Bob Brown as Barbara Cartland leaning slightly with running mascara, this poppy is a bright-pink upright oriental poppy of great charm. It reaches three feet in height (90 cm) and hold their colour in full sun, making a willowy statement.

’Karine’
If you want a poppy that fits into the mixed border easily the smaller-flowered 'Karine' (2 ft) has shell-pink saucers neatly blotched in beetroot-red. There are lots of oriental poppies to choose from, but misnaming is rife. Buy your oriental poppies in flower if at all possible.

'Patty’s Plum'
Patty flowers earlier than most, but tends to fade in sun. Planted underneath twisted hazel it opens its plummy-mauve flowers just as the hazel leaves open. Discovered by Sandra Pope (once at Hadspen House) on the compost of heap of a nearby Somerset nursery woman - Mrs Patty Marrow (up to 3 ft).

'Lilac Girl'
A seedling from Patty’s Plum with blue-toned lilac flowers - position in shade (up to 3 ft).

'Mrs Perry'
The first delicate pale salmon-pink poppy of all with strong stems carrying delicate flowers neatly marked in purple-black at the base of each petal (3 ft/90 cm).

'Kleine Tänzerin'
Semi-double, dark pink flowers on short stems above a thick clump of long, mid-green leaves (2 - 3 ft/60-90 cm).

'Cedric Morris' AGM
Large bowl-shaped single flowers in soft grey-pink with large black blotches. Sir Cedric (a noted painter) referred to this pink as dirty knickers, but gardeners love it (up to 3 ft/90 cm).

'Grauwe Witwe' (Grey Widow)
Palest grey flowers that look almost ghostly - needs a bright companion or a dark background to look good (up to 3 ft/90 cm).

'Black and White' AGM
The best black and white form with ruffled white petals and purple-black blotches (28 in/55 cm).

'Turkenlouise'
Fringed, vibrant red flowers held on straight stems. A pure and elegant poppy (2 - 3 ft/up to 60 cm)

'Forncett Summer'
Fringed salmon-pink flowers with a crêpe paper texture (up to 3 ft/90 cm).

Did you know...?

Amos Perry (1871 - 1953) bred the first oriental poppy that wasn’t a coarse, bright-orange at his Enfield Nursery. He selected a salmon-pink seedling from a field of thousands of orange ones and named it 'Mrs Perry' after his first wife Nancy. 

When 'Mrs Perry' was launched in 1906 it caused a sensation. However Perry wanted to breed a white oriental poppy, but it kept on eluding him. One day he got an irate letter from a customer complaining that her peachy 'Mrs Perry' was a fat, ugly white poppy. An indignant exchange of letters followed and eventually Amos Perry (who valued his clientele greatly) went down to placate his belligerent customer clutching several 'Mrs Perry' plants. He was delighted to see his elusive white oriental poppy growing in her garden. It was duly dug up and appeared as 'Perry’s White' in 1912.

In all, Perry bred eleven oriental poppies and they include the black and red fringed 'Lord Lambourne' (1920) (likened to old military tunics) and the orange-scarlet, ruffled 'Marcus Perry'. The latter is still available.

Are Oriental poppies poisonous?

Oriental poppies are poisonous, unlike the opium poppy whose seeds are used in the kitchen.

Subscribe today for just £34.95 for 12 issues...

Subscribe today and save 51%