Plant of the Month – May 2013

Anemone sylvestris

Every May the Anemone sylvestris emerge and put on a glorious show for a few weeks, starting about the end of April. They are rather like our native wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) on steroids having similarly divided leaves and nodding white flowers but reaching a foot or so tall instead of a few inches.

I hear rumours of repeat flowering in autumn although mine have never acheived this feat. They spread about quite a bit and I understand that in lighter soils than ours they can be a bit of a pest, but such a pretty pest.

Anemone sylvestris

Natives of meadows and woodlands they are happy even in quite deep shade, though here they are in partial shade. One or two clumps are in full sun and although they are a bit less vigorous than the ones in the shadier spot, they seem to be doing ok.

Nodding in clusters with the church in the background they bring to mind a crowd of choirboys with their heads bowed. If my Dad’s tales of being a choirboy are anything to go by I shall soon find them behind the shed having a crafty ciggie.

Lathyrus vernus

Seeing as I’ve completely messed up my blog schedule and haven’t done a Plant of the Month for ages I thought I’d do a profile of a lovely little plant for this time of year and then I’ll do my best to pull my socks up and get back into the blog driving seat this month. The winter blues ought to be well over by now!

Lathyrus vernus

The gorgeous blue-purple pea flowers of Lathyrus vernus are a rich, saturated colour and they go wonderfully with late flowering narcissus and miniature tulips. The young growth uncoils itself in an almost fern-like way in early spring and after flowering the seed pods twist into brown helixes after they burst, giving some interest for the keen-eyed beyond flowering season; otherwise it is quite unobtrusive for the rest of the year.

Lathyrus vernus likes a fertile soil and sun or partial shade and forms a clump 30-45cm tall and wide. It will self seed but not in a particularly bothersome manner. There are paler, wishy-washy coloured versions available but why would you?

Lathyrus vernus with Tulipa ‘Little Beauty’

Also, its common name is Spring Vetchling and that’s just cute. Anything that sounds like a minor enemy in a fantasy roleplaying game can have space in my garden.

 

Plant of the Month – September 2012

This month I’ll be having a peek at one of my favourite shrubs:

Viburnum opulus

Also know as the Guelder Rose, Viburnum opulus is a shrub or small tree which is native to Britain. It has lovely white flowers in Spring, followed by bright red berries in September and often a glorious red autumn leaf colour too.

It seems it will grow pretty much anywhere. The one pictured gets rather soggy every winter and thrives in the clay soil, but I’d give it a try almost anywhere but real extremes. They grow to about five metres tall and a bit less than that across; there is a compact variety called (with great imagination) ‘Compactum’ which reaches about 1.5-2m. There is also a yellow leaved variety available called ‘Aureum’ and its leaves are a pretty yellowish lime green, but I’ve found it’s rather prone to scorching.

At home in a native woodland, or an ornamental scheme, grown as a shrub or perhaps on a single stem as a small tree Guelder Rose is a really adaptable, beautiful plant. You know, I think it’d look great with a clematis scrambling through it, preferably one with attractive seedheads for a really good autumnal display…

A quick peek at Maggie M

This is Rosa ‘Margaret Merril’ in its second flush of the year, looking glorious in the early sunshine:

Rosa ‘Margaret Merril’

I like the slight pink flush in the centre of otherwise pure white petals and they’re beautifully scented too.

Plant of the Month – August 2012

Sometimes you want something bright and easy, which perhaps even borders on the thuggish and provides a big honking chunk of colour in August when the early summer plants are starting to make everything feel a bit prematurely autumnal with their seedpods.

Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Atrosanguinea’

Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Atrosanguinea’ forms a clump of quite attractive pointed leaves which throw up lots of cheerful pink-red flower spikes in late summer. It is certainly not a delicate plant and you might occasionally have to beat it back a little, maybe even with a chair and a whip.

Persicaria in the border

Here I’ve planted it in my soggy bottom border and it’s bulked up a huge amount since last autumn so don’t go planting it in a small space next to things which are worried by competition. Fortunately the Glyceria maxima ‘Variegata’ which you can see in the background is not phased by this and is squaring up to the Persicaria in a slightly worrying manner.

The Persicaria is about 4 foot tall with its flower spikes on and likes a bit of moisture in its soil. Here it’s in a reasonably sunny spot, although the border faces north and once the Cornuses in the back get going (assuming the Persicaria and Glyceria let them…) they’ll be partially shady, but they should be fine with that.

Trying to look sweet – we know the truth…

It’s a bit of a favourite in meadowey prairie type schemes and I can see why. Those flower spikes have a translucence that works really well with grasses and other wafty flowers, but the plants themselves are as far from wafty as you can get. There’ll be no fainting and smelling salts here!

Plant of the Month – July 2012

This month I’ve chosen a plant I’ve grown from seed and have nurtured to maturity with my own fairish hands.

Salvia sclarea (Clary Sage)

Clary sage is a perennial to which the word statuesque might be applied if you were feeling like it. I have to admit to having forgotten quite how big it is before planting it where it is. I had forgotten it’s almost my height (5 foot) and two to three feet across so there may have to be some judicious re-jigging of this border come autumn time. The internet hoojamajit is telling me it’s biennial or short lived perennial but it’s always been perennial in my experience.

I’m growing it in our clay soil, improved by digging in organic matter. I would expect it to fail on anything heavier or more waterlogged but it should be fine or even better on drier and sandier soil. Having said that I would assume it would be more likely to be biennial and perhaps a bit smaller on less meaty soil!

The clump of large leaves is quite attractive in its own right earlier on in the season and the stems stick around for quite a while giving height to the border Although this season is so damp that I expect everything to collapse in a heap of grey mould sometime soon.

Salvia sclarea (Clary Sage)

I grew these beauties from purchased seed and they didn’t need any special treatment. The whole plant has quite a strong almost ‘sweaty’ smell when bruised which can be a bit overpowering and which a lot of people find unpleasant. Their seed has the interesting property of producing a mucilage in water which was historically used to treat eye complaints, hence ‘Clary’ or ‘Cleareye’ sage and it appears in Culpeper’s Herbal under that name.

I can certainly say that putting this Salvia in my new border has played a major part in it having the feel of a fully grown border even in its first year. Hurrah for Salvia sclarea!

Primula! Hurrah!

Earlier this year Kininvie of Gardening at the Edge sent me some Primula florindae (Thank you Kininvie!) and I put them in the Soggy Bottom border at the towers. At first they were twigs with roots and mud, then they sprouted leaves and I got excited (but quietly in case I scared them back to Scotland) and now they’re flowering!

This one’s orange and most of the others seem to be yellow. The smaller ones still seem to be bulking themselves up so I don’t really expect them to flower until next year. I’m so pleased they survived the experience and seem to be happily settling into our southern soil.

Plant of the Month – June 2012

Knautia Macedonia

I get asked about this striking Knautia all the time. It flowers from early June through the Summer, loves a sunny spot and will do in most neutral to alkaline soils. It self seeds a bit, but not aggressively and is the most wonderful shade of deep red which seems to fit into almost any colour scheme – somehow managing to go well with warm bright colours and cool pastels.

The plant itself is a fairly chunky thing, but not overly so and as the flowers are held well above on thin stems it has that translucent-ness which allows it to weave itself among other plants, and be ok right at the front of the border.

Its seed heads stay as these delightful lime green pincushions for a good while before they go brown and so later in the season you have the red pincushions alongside these bright green ones which is really rather stylish. (Although you might want to take my definitions of stylish with a pinch of salt!)

There is a pastel pinky mix called Knautia ‘Melton Pastels’ or something but why have pink when you could have that red?

Plant of the Month – May 2012

This month’s flower is one I’ve loved since childhood and perhaps my choice is a bit predictable, it being a staple (along with tulips) of pretty much every Chelsea show garden I’ve ever seen (and certainly most of the ones I’ve liked) but I’m not going to apologise for that. It’s unashamedly romantic, perhaps sometimes even a bit twee but I love it, so there.

Aquilegia vulgaris

A.v. ‘Nora Barlow’ was one of the first plants I really fell in love with when I started gardening ‘properly’:

It grows in one of the rose borders which I stuffed with herbaceous perennials early on in my time at the towers. The other aquilegia I planted in that border is the dramatic ‘William Guiness’:

Good old William and Nora have been getting busy in the border and have had several love children, though I also suspect Aquilegia vulgaris may have been joining in at times (oh I say!):

They are happy in most soils and like sun or partial shade and will seed around, although the babies won’t ‘come true’ from their parents, you can see from the examples above (and take my word for it, there are lots of others) that the results are often interesting in their own right. Strict deadheading would prevent this if you wanted to (but I reserve the right to call you a spoilsport).

I grew some from seed that the packet claimed were a ‘Nora Barlow Mix’ (so they should have all had the spurless double shape which is so distinctive) and while they were double and very pretty, they weren’t a Nora Barlow type so I would caution ‘buyer beware’ when it comes to seed packets. I planted the results in my new border last autumn:

If I was a granny I’d be quite happy with one of these bonnets!

Parrot tulips? Yea or Nay?

I used to be very much a ‘nay’. I thought they looked grotesque, diseased and over-the-top. The floral equivalent of excessively curly gilded carvings.

But these rather lovely ‘Rococco’ tulips are making me change my mind. See, what happens is that my employers go to Chelsea and get seduced by the tulip stands and every year there is a surprise package of tulips and other bulbs for me to play with. And so I get to plant tulips I’d never have chosen myself.

Like this ‘Black Parrot’. And I’m being won over by their slightly gothic extravagance. Furthermore I think I may have been being a snob. Mind you, I still think they are an acquired taste and would really be out of place in a lot of gardens.

What do you think?