Cottage Garden Plant: Stock Flowers

The gillyflower, less graceful than the rose, less majestic than the lily, keeps its freshness longer than either.

The Language of Flowers by miss ildrewe

Cottage Garden Plant: Stock Flowers. July 10, 2024.

The dawn hour reveals the cool pink of the freshly blooming Stock flowers. The flower-clustered head of the Stock flower is a prettier flower than its name suggests. Traditionally, Stock is also referred to as Gilly flowers or, worse still, Hoary Stock. Hoary feels almost insulting to this beautiful floral creation. Gilly sounds better, but I prefer to stick with the name Stock. Indeed, this highly aromatic flower belies its name, rounding out the cottage garden with a soft sweetness and perfuming the surrounding air with its deliciously sweet clove scent, bringing to mind cotton candy clouds of pink. It is an old-fashioned beauty that stands upright, bearing heavily scented blossoms that bring joy to the cottage garden.

My gardening experience with Stock amounts to almost nothing, as they simply have never come to my attention. A year or two ago, a tag caught my eye of a vintage mix of stock flower plants at a local nursery, so I bought some. The results weren’t impressive enough for me to add them. The plants seemed insignificant, which could have been a number of things. However, last winter I decided to give them another chance and ordered several colors of Iron Stock seeds, something I am now glad I did. The Iron Stock seeds added tall, creamy shades of yellow, light pink, and white stock to the herbaceous border at Hidden Bluff. Seeing these pretty flowers in full bloom in our garden is a pleasure, as is getting acquainted with them.

Getting Started…

The Stock flowers did take quite a while to get started. I sowed them outside in early Spring per instructions for our garden zone 8b/9a, but they were long in germinating. When they did finally sprout, the seedlings seemed to stay tiny forever. I think they were just waiting for the sun to be warmer. Once the weather heated up, they began to take off. When the triple-digit weather arrived, I was concerned about how they would hold up, but they are doing amazingly well. That being said, I am quite positive that, like most temperate climate flowers, they wouldn’t prefer a steady diet of 100-degree weather.

Eventually, I will harvest seeds, although it will be interesting to see if they self-seed easily. Already, I have spotted a seed pod. Later this summer, our greenhouse will go up, and I will try my hand at starting seeds over the winter using the harvested seeds.

Formally identified in the 16th century by an Italian doctor, the Stock flower has long been a part of the cottage garden. Its popularity continued through medieval and Victorian Europe, and especially in Germany. They aren’t garden superstars like the rose or peony, and they certainly don’t strive to outshine the others, but as solid garden companions, they blend in pastel harmony with the rest of the garden, with a nice, long blooming season of about two months.

Growing Stock Flowers in my Cottage Garden

The Stock appreciates regular watering and is an easy flower to care for. However, it obliges the gardener by being rather drought-tolerant and even friendly to afternoon shade, although ours are in full sun. It likes neutral-to-alkaline, well-draining soil. One of the reasons I added this to the garden was for its reputation as a great cut flower, and looking at its sturdy stems and hardy flowers, it is easy to see why. One is even still growing after its main stem was mostly severed. It is a great filler flower for a bouquet. Stock flowers are of modest height, with flowerheads composed of many small flowers. They come in a wide variety of colors for those who prefer colors other than pastels.

General gardening sources seemed a bit mixed on the characteristics of stock, leaving me wondering. Some call for sowing in early Spring, and others in late summer, for Spring flowering. And depending on who you ask, it might be an annual, a tender perennial, or a biennial. It depends on the area you are growing in. In any case, Stock is a promising flower friendship that has me hooked!

Have a beautiful day!