GARDENING / And so to bed, with a flourish: Horticultural elitists still sneer, but display schemes may be on the way back, says Mary Keen

BEDDING plants are big business, and the fortunes of multinational companies have been made by selling geraniums and Busy Lizzies. It hardly needs business acumen to see that shrubs or hardy perennials are a less attractive commercial proposition than plants that flower for one season and are then thrown away.

Colour, the best and least resistible trick in sales promotion, is a winner. Marketing men package products in red to attract our attention, they soothe us with blue, or cheer us with yellow. Bedding plants need no packaging; they are colour. These mass-produced throwaway flowers all but sell themselves. But not to every gardener.

Park-keepers and local authorities buy bedding to plant on a scale not seen since Victorian times; but in private gardens open to the public, bedding plants are rare. Regiments of royal red geraniums may be laid out around the gates of Buckingham Palace but this sort of display gardening is now considered vulgar, except in publicly owned spaces.

I rang the National Gardens Scheme, which organises the opening of more than 3,000 private gardens in aid of charity, to ask whether they had any record of formal schemes of annuals in their gardens. Most special features are logged on their computers, but of bedding- out they had no record. There was, my informant thought, a garden in Dorset which went in for annuals. Later she rang back to report that local organisers had come up with a handful of gardens, although one organiser said that she personally hated them. This sort of horticultural elitism is a hangover from the end of the last century, when plantsmen like E A Bowles condemned Victorian parterres as 'the modern millionaire's made-by-contract opulent sort of gardening, that relies upon Bank of England notes for manure'.

Bedding out is expensive, but not as expensive as it was. Used with imagination there ought to be a place for it in more gardens - it seems a pity not to benefit from all the research that has been put into producing masses of plants in uniform sizes and shapes and an incredible array of colours. If you feel stuffy about production-line flowers, try visiting Colegrave's trial grounds near Banbury on Sunday 15 August, when they open under the National Gardens Scheme. (Odd that nobody mentioned that when I rang, but the programmed colour- blindness among the upper echelons of gardeners must have erased its memory.)

Colegrave's is the place to plan a scheme to end all schemes. It is a field laid out in painted rows and patterns and splashes - pure colour. This is where park-keepers pick their flowers and where garden-centre owners go to see trials of new varieties that they will sell to gardeners like us. Colegrave's research reveals that 60 per cent of the bedding plants bought by the public are destined for tubs and hanging baskets, and 40 per cent of those are pink.

Tim Stickings, who is in charge of the display beds, has two formal layouts side by side which made me realise that there is more to bedding out than crescents of geraniums. The moonscape garden was a pattern of lobelias in different blues, mauve ageratums and silver cineraria. The sunshine garden had Sun King-style rays of marigolds in bronzy red and golden yellow, with geraniums and begonias in coppery pinks and crimsons.

Planting by numbers is an intriguing game. John Thompson is the city landscape architect at Oxford, which has won Britain in Bloom Awards two years running. He veers less towards old-fashioned municipal style these days and suggested that bedding out is probably better in the hands of colourists than horticulturalists. Painting the ground with a fluid pattern of colour is what appeals to him - like half an acre of yellow marigolds with pink zig-zags running through it.

Private gardeners may not run to half an acre, but painting a picture on the ground is an engaging idea. It could be as simple as initials, or geometric blocks of colour, or a design adapted from an embroidery canvas. Any drawing on a grid pattern can be transferred to the ground if you put down a piece of large mesh netting as a guideline grid or set up lines of string and canes. Less regular patterns can be drawn on to horticultural paper matting over flattened ground in chalk. If you've a steady hand you can trickle the pattern on to the ground in sand. In a celebration year, for a wedding perhaps, or an important birthday, or in a brand-new garden to give you time to grow on larger permanent plants, it's fun to try the floral flourish.

Oxford's John Allcock, who is responsible for choosing and maintaining the flower beds which have won him so many prizes, uses farmyard manure or the packaged manure 6X on the beds annually. He refurbishes the soil in autumn, but David Welch of London's Royal Parks feels that adding manure in spring is safer. Most successful bedders-out use a fertiliser like Vitax Q4 during the growing season and provide water in dry periods.

Seedsmen such as Colegrave's are working miracles. They have perfected geraniums and begonias which can be grown from seed to flower the same year and they are developing rain-resistant petunias, as well as geraniums which appear to dead-head themselves and seem to flower forever.

Victorian gardeners never had it so good; and display gardening in patterns is easier to stage than it has ever been. There are signs, too, that making patterns with flowers is coming back into favour. An article by David Welch in this month's issue of the RHS magazine, The Garden, extols what he calls 'floral cheerfulness'. And the National Trust announces that 'flamboyant carpet bedding returns to Cragside' in Northumberland, while at Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire (also National Trust) the huge south parterre has been restored to its late-Victorian colour scheme. Perhaps bedding plants are no longer infra dig after all.

Colegrave Seeds Ltd, West Adderbury, Banbury, Oxon, is open on 15 August, from 10 till 5pm. Admission pounds 1.50, children free.

The top ten for British beds

Geranium Century 'Cardinal' Red traditional geranium with patterned leaves.

Lobelia 'Cambridge Blue' Sky-blue summer bedding. Reliable.

Myosotis Forget Me Not 'Blue Ball' Improved variety can be home-sown, but watch for mildew and spray if it appears.

Bellis perennis 'Pomponette' Tiny pink and white daisies which can be sown in summer to flower the following year.

Bidens ferulifolia Yellow daisies all summer. Treat as half-hardy annual, easy from seed, or can be kept going by cuttings indoors over winter

Verbena rigida Mauve flowers same year from seed, hardy in mild areas or with protection.

Tulips Very useful for bedding. Short varies like Peach Blossom (12 in, flowers in April) or Aladdin, which is scarlet and yellow (18 in, flowers in May), are best.

Muscari (Grape hyacinths) 'Bluespike' Can be left in the ground and over-planted with geraniums after spring flowering.

Impatiens (Busy Lizzy) Will flower in shade huge range of summer colour. Not hardy but easy from cuttings.

Phacelia campanularia Blue flowers six weeks after sowing. Cheapest and quickest, and out for ages.