Become an annuals expert.
Home Sudies School -How to Grow Annuals Course
Who Should Study this Course?
- Nurserymen, Garden Centre Staff, Gardeners, Landscapers who grow annuals
- Cut Flower Farmers
- Seed Producers, Merchants and Breeders
- Anyone else with a passion for annual flowering plants
Annuals are a valuable horticultural crop grown commercially as cut flowers, as seedlings or as advanced pots of colour. With careful choice, versatile annuals can deliver year round colour in the home garden. They work to fill gaps between perennials, they can be used to disguise the messy foliage of bulbs as they seasonally die-off, and they can help to keep gardens or parks in the peak of perfection. This eight lesson course reveals the secrets of how to identify annual species, what to grow and when to grow each variety. It covers soil improvement, pest control, irrigation, propagation, greenhouse growing, hydroponics and much more. It is equally as useful to the home gardener and to the professional gardener as to those intending to grow annuals commercially.
Lesson Structure
There are 8 lessons in this course:
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Introduction
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Review of the system of plant identification, physiology, information sources
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Culture
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Planting, staking, mulching, watering, feeding, pruning, etc
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Propagation
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Methods of propagating annuals.
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Propagation of selected varieties of annuals.
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Growing Annuals in Hydroponics.
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Pest & Disease
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Irrigation
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Greenhouse Management.
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Harvest, Post Harvest & Quality.
Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.
Aims
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Discuss the classification of annual flowering plants through the plant naming system.
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Discuss culture requirements of annuals.
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Propagate annuals.
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Explain methods of hydroponic culture in relation to annuals
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Identify pest and diseases of annuals
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Describe various types of irrigation systems and the water requirements of annuals.
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Describe various greenhouses and related equipment available.
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Determine procedures for the handling of annuals during and after harvest.
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Design annual flower beds.
Annuals are grown widely around the world, in home gardens, public parks and other places; primarily because they can provide a quick and spectacular, and often colourful display. They are not usually the cheapest way of planting an area; but nevertheless their potential to impress, ensures they will always have a place in horticulture.
Annuals are plants which are able to grow from a seed to a mature plant, flower, and produce seed all within the space of one year.
An annual is any plant which completes its full lifecycle in one year.
Generally annuals are grown in the garden for a period of less than one year, with the expressed purpose of providing flowers and colour.
The major advantages of annuals are:
- they produce flowers quickly
- they can be changed frequently
Annuals are grown both as commercial cut flower crops and as bedding plants (bedding plants are plants grown in a garden bed on a temporary basis).
Commonly grown annuals which are able to be used as both bedding plants and cut flowers include: marigolds, asters, stock, poppy, statice, calendula, gypsophila and helichrysum. The range of plants grown as annuals goes well beyond this though. Consider the following, just to begin with:
Low Growing Annuals (less than 30cm)
• Ageratum
• Alyssum
• Antirrhinum (small type)
• Aster (dwarf types)
• Begonia (dwarf bedding types)
• Bellis (English daisy)
• Brachycome
• Calceolaria (slipper flower)
• Cineraria (dwarf types)
• Dianthus (pinks)
• Impatiens (busy lizzie)
• Linaria
• Lobelia
• Matthiola (stock dwarf types)
• Matricaria (feverfew)
• Mesembryanthemum (livingstone daisy)
• Mimulus (monkey flower)
• Myosotis (forget me not)
• Nemesia (dwarf types)
• Nemophila (blue eyes)
• Nigella (dwarf types)
• Petunia
• Phlox (annual phlox)
• Portulaca (sun plant)
• Verbena
• Viola (pansy, viola)
• Zinnia (dwarf types)
Medium Height Annuals (30 60cm)
• Acroclinum (everlasting daisy)
• Antirrhinum (medium types)
• Arctotis
• Begonia (bedding type)
• Calendula
• Campanula
• Celosia
• Centaurea (cornflower)
• Cheiranthus(wallflower)
• Chrysanthemum
• Clarkia
• Coreopsis
• Cosmos (some)
• Dahlia (bedding type)
• Dimorphotheca
• Gaillardia (blanket flower)
• Godetia
• Gypsophila (babys breath)
• Helichrysum (straw flower)
• Heliotropium (heliotrope)
• Iberis (candytuft)
• Limonium (statice)
• Matthiola (stocks)
• Nemesia
• Nigella (love in a mist)
• Papaver (poppy medium types)
• Phlox (taller types)
• Rudbeckia
• Salvia
• Schizanthus (poor mans orchid)
• Tagetes (marigold smaller and medium types)
• Tropaeolum (Nasturtium medium types)
• Zinnia
Tall growing Annuals (greater than 60 cm)
• Althaea (hollyhock)
• Amaranthus
• Antirrihnum (snapdragon tall types)
• Cleome (spider flower)
• Cosmos (tall types)
• Helianthus (sunflower)
• Helichrysum (strawflower tall types)
• Lathyrus (sweet pea)
• Lunaria (honesty)
• Molucella (bells of Ireland)
• Papaver (poppy tall types)
• Rudbeckia (tall types)
• Scabiosa
• Tagetes (marigolds tall types)
• Tropaeolum (nasturtium tall types)
FREQUENT QUESTIONS
Why Choose This Course
- Unique course materials (developed by our staff) and more current than some colleges (many reviewed annually); as a result, ACS graduates can be more up to date.
- We work hard to help you understand and remember it, develop an ability to apply it in the real world, and build networks with others who work in this field (It’s more than just serving up a collection of information –if all you want is information, buy a book; but if you want an education, that takes learning to a whole new level).
- Start whenever you want, study at your own pace, study anywhere
- Don’t waste time and money traveling classes
- We provide more choices–courses are written to allow you more options to focus on parts of the subject that are of more interest to you; a huge range of elective subjects are offered that don’t exist elsewhere.
- Tutors are accessible (more than elsewhere) – academics work in both the UK and Australia, 5 days a week, 16 hours a day. Answering emails and phone calls from students are top priority.
- We treat students as individuals –don’t get lost in a crowd. Our tutors communicate with you one to one.
- Extra help at no extra cost if needed. When you find something you cannot do, we help you through it or will provide another option.
- Support after you finish a course –We can advise about getting work, starting business, writing a CV, etc. We can promote students and their businesses through our extensive profile on the internet. Graduates who ask will be helped.
- Support from a team of a dozen professional horticulturists, living in different parts of the UK, and in both temperate and tropical climate zones of Australia.
About ACS
ACS was started in 1979 by John Mason, who at the time was a gardening author, horticultural consultant and lecturer in horticulture at several colleges across Melbourne (in Australia). Over the summer that year John discovered that there were thousands of applicants going to be turned away from horticulture courses at Burnley Horticultural College (now Melbourne University). There were simply too few courses being offered for the number of people wanting to study horticulture in Australia. This situation prompted a move to establish a correspondence course at Burnley; but after months of unsuccessful lobbying for support from government; John wrote a course, and with help from a colleague at Council of Adult Education, marketed it.
Standards were originally set in line with what were seen to be the standards of Australia's top horticultural college; and over the years, those standards have never been reduced. This makes our courses longer and more demanding than some other colleges; but it has also led to us building a credibility that stands tall in the horticulture industry across the world.
In the early 1990's John started visiting the UK and becoming involved with the horticulture industry there. Around the mid 1990's ACS began offering RHS courses, and in 2003, John was formally recognised for his contribution to British Horticulture by being made a fellow of the Institute of Horticulture. ACS, as a school, established an office and staff in the UK in 2001, and has expanded considerably since then. Today it is formally affiliated with five other colleges in the UK (including Warwickshire College); all of who license and deliver ACS courses.
A team of leading horticulturists work for the school's horticulture department, including 12 faculty members in both the UK and Australia
How You Study
- As soon as you enroll, we send an email to explain it all.
- We direct you to a short orientation video (downloadable over the internet) to watch, where our principal introduces you to how the course works, and how you can access all sorts of support services
- You are either given a code to access your course online, or sent out a CD or course materials through the mail (or by courier).
- Work through lessons one by one, each lesson typically having four parts:
- An aim -which tells you what you should be achieving in the lesson
- Reading -notes written and regularly revised by our academic staff
- Set Task(s) -These are practicals, research or other experiential learning tasks that strengthen and add to what you have been reading
- Assignment -By answering questions, submitting them to a tutor, then getting feedback from the tutor, you confirm that you are on the right track, but more than that, you are guided to consider what you have been studying in different ways, broadening your perspective and reinforcing what you are learning about
- Other - Your work in a course rarely stops at just the above four parts. Different courses and different students will need further learning experiences. Your set task or assignment may lead to other things, interacting with tutors or people in industry, reviewing additional reference materials or something else. We treat every student as an individual and supplement their learning needs as the occasion requires.
- We provide access to and encourage you to use a range of supplementary services including an online student room, including online library; student bookshop, newsletters, social media etc.
- We provide a "student manual", that is a quick solution to most problems that might occur
Recognition
- ACS has a highly respected international profile: by employers and academics alike. People are more aware of us than many other distance education schools –just do a search for “horticulture distance education courses” and see what comes up on the internet; or search for ACS Distance education on Facebook or Linked in, and see how many connections we have compared to other colleges.
- Recognised by International Accreditation and Recognition Council
- ACS has been educating people around the world since 1979
- Over 100,000 have now studied ACS courses, across more than 150 countries
- Formal affiliations with colleges in five countries
- A faculty of over 40 internationally renowned academics –books written by our staff used by universities and colleges around the world.
Extra Books or Reference Materials
- The course provides you with everything that you need to complete it successfully.
- Assignments may ask you to look for extra information (eg. by contacting nurseries, visiting gardens or searching the internet), but our school's resources and tutors are always available as a back up. If you hit a "roadblock", we can quickly send you additional information or provide expert advice over the phone or email; to keep you moving in your studies.
- Some students choose to buy additional references, to take their learning beyond what is essential for the course. If a student wants to buy books, we operate an online bookshop offering ebooks written by staff at the school. Student discounts are available if you are studying with us. The range of e books available is being expanded rapidly, with at least one new ebook being written and published by our staff every month. See www.acsebook.com
Learn How to Grow Annual Flowers by Home Studies -Garden School Training Program -UK College
