I grow these (along with rather a lot of vaguely similar hawkbeards, hawkweeds, uruspermum, catanache and tragoponums). They are not really specimen plants, growing best in groups in a fairly wild, informal garden (mine). Not difficult from seed and will flower in 4 months from a fairly early start. In my garden, they are early summer plants, dying back by mid June. I am not really certain whether they are annual or biennial (if I was sowing them, I would got for a September sowing for blooms for the following season. Also, they never stay in the same place but move around the garden like many self-sown volunteers. They are pretty, tough plants,untroubled by pests or disease but are not good in containers or in carefully structured displays.

Thanks for your response. i think i’ll give them a go. My garden is pretty unstructured. i just plant long-flowering survivors of blazing afternoon sun. Apart from the dahlias, everything has to be unattractive to slugs. here is a pic, taken a minute ago.

I have just come back from the allotment where I checked out the state of my current plants. All the summer sown plants (mostly uruspermum this year) made neat rosettes which are looking great right now. I also have huge issues with slugs and snails. Hostas are a fantasy, while vulnerable crops such as beans have to be sown in modules and only planted in the open ground when the seedlings are reasonably robust. In my mild climate, this means doing a lot of planting in autumn and winter when mollusc predation is vastly diminished. In your position, I would be tempted to raise crepis in pots, treating them as biennials; sowing in May (would be January for you, I guess) and planting out in autumn/early winter when they will establish in the still warmish soil.. I expect you have learned your own strategies to avoid pest predation though.

Nice dahlias - I vastly prefer the simple single blooms and grow a few species such as coccinea and merckii too.

Thanks for your advice.