Just Some Plants – GardenRant

I wrote out another hopefully thought-provoking article for GardenRant.

But it will save for another day. I spend too much of my time thinking about frighteningly important things at the moment, and I think it would be cathartic to just do something about plants for a change. I hope in some small way these plants brighten your day.

They certainly brightened mine.

Trip Out

I’m involved with a plant trial at the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley, England.

It involves me hauling myself out of bed, heading east for the best part of four hours, looking at some plants and then heading west for what is invariably considerably longer than four hours. The trial is interesting, the travelling is not.

I was going to say that my time in the garden at Wisley is a perk, but it isn’t; if some rule was introduced that meant I couldn’t look at the garden while I’m there I wouldn’t go to the meetings. Indeed, and let it be noted by my colleagues on this trial, if meetings go on for too long I will wander off to look at plants!

Climate

They say that in the US you can drive for a whole day and still be in the same state, while in the UK you’d be at the other end of the country and the name given to a bread roll will have changed several times. I can’t say whether the US side of this is true- I suspect it probably is- but I can attest that if you really pushed yourself and drove without breaks you can make if from one end of the country to the other.

And yes the local names for bread rolls will have changed as you pass through various regions.

What interests me, going west to east and back again, is how much the landscape and vegetation of the UK changes in a fairly short distance. I leave my home in Devon, where ferns luxuriate in the hedgerows, and a few hours later I’m in an area where the grasses by the road can be half the height they’d make back in Devon. The South East region of Britain is very much affected by the continental climate of Europe, while in the South West we have a more maritime climate thanks to the Atlantic.

This climatic difference means that some plants grow very well in the South West but are a little less luxuriant at Wisley, but in turn there are plants that grow in the more severe climate of Wisley that dither or die in Devon.

The excitement of seeing something quite different is what motivates me on my trip.

Take lagerstoemias (crape myrtles) for example. These will grow well enough in my area but the flowering is typically poor, if you get flowers at all. At Wisley they get plenty of heat and a good cold winter’s rest, so they stand out in the garden like steroidal buddlejas.

There will be lagerstroemias that perform in my area, maybe against a hot wall, but we’re a little way off finding out which ones are worth trying.

By contrast I was surprised to see how bistorts, particularly Bistorta amplexicaulis (formerly Persicaria amplexicaulis), look a bit sad and tired by late summer. Here we see Bistorta amplexicaulis ‘Orange Field’ in the new Piet Oudolf garden. Yes these were only planted this year, but in Devon I would expect them a good 50% taller even in their first year.

Hibiscus

I don’t really have much to do with hibiscus. You see Hibiscus ‘Blue Bird’ and the slightly better H. ‘Ultramarine’ in gardens but the giant-flowered ones don’t seem to like our winter wet.

It looks like another pink mallow… until I tell you this flower was pretty much the size of my face- spectacular plant!

Heleniums

I’m sure heleniums, sneezeweeds, will be familiar to a large number of American gardeners. We grow a few in the UK, the most commonly encountered being the quite frankly glorious Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’.

I was quite taken with the red-orange of Helenium ‘Rubinzwerg’ too, seen here with a backdrop of pure white Lysimachia ephemerum. I know H. ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’ well but haven’t really looked out for others. We grow the lysimachia well in Devon but heleniums can prove a bit reluctant to grow without excellent drainage. Add to that the fact that summer rainfall can damage their flowers. 

 

Maybe it makes sense to drive all the way to Wisley to see them during their flowering season and grow something else in Devon gardens instead?

Begonia

There’s something a bit magical about plants that do something.

We’re drawn to plants that move or have parlour tricks to entertain us, not necessarily because we need entertaining but because so many garden plants can seem rather inanimate.

The trick of Begonia soli-mutata is one of the more bizarre ones; this is a plant that changes colour depending on light conditions. If you cover half the leaf with thick card, shine a bright light for half an hour, then take the care away and the shaded part of the leaf will be darker than the non-shaded. Neat trick.

This is an indoor plant. I’ve grown it a couple of times but I don’t get on with indoor plants.

Sunflowers

Next to my trial there is a trial of annual sunflowers. I was particularly drawn to two entries.

I’m not sure what Helianthus ‘Teddy Bear’ looks like but it doesn’t really look like a sunflower. I guess it does look a bit like the body of a fluffy teddy bear.

Lousy for pollinating insects and probably doesn’t seed, but to be honest I don’t really care; you wouldn’t want a garden full of these so wildlife still gets a look-in elsewhere.

I’ve had phases of liking or disliking red sunflowers, but this Helianthus ‘Ms Mars’ was quite interesting. A more conventional flower so will keep insects and birds happy.

A Couple Of Blues

There’s something special about blue flowers. Blue has a short wavelength so stands out very well, hence why some countries have blue lights on their emergency vehicles.

Blue is quite an exciting colour to use; bright but usually not an aggressive colour. I was particularly taken by two blue flowering plants.

The first was Salvia uliginosa, a Brazilian species of surprising hardiness. I grow this myself but it usually dithers along and flowers toward the end of summer, but the Wisley plants were way ahead.

I’ve discovered that you have a much better chance of keeping this species over winter in wetter regions if you leave the old stems until the new growth comes up the following spring. I love the colour and gravitate to it where ever I see it.

I would like to conclude this plant ramble with something very special indeed, a tropical water lily.

This is Nymphaea ‘Star Of Zanzibar’. Blue is pretty much absent in hardy water lilies (although there is apparently a hardy blue grown by die-hard collectors with big budgets), and the flower being held clear above the water is an indicator that this is a tropical water lily rather than a hardy one.

Oh to have a nice warm glasshouse with a heated pool for such a treasure.