PROMISING PERENNIALS
While gardeners expect hardy herbaceous plants to keep coming up year after year, it is always a pleasure to see them fulfil that promise after a rather harsh winter. Brunera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' is four times the size it was when I planted it last July. The flowers are abundant and so like Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis). Click on the images for a closer look, please.
I am even more pleased to see that a plant called Lynchis coronaria Occulata has put on such a mound of healthy growth promising a crown of glorious carmine flowers this year. I bought it from a garden centre in one of those little pots, really cheaply, and look at it now. It is planted in such a place that I never had high expectations but, apparently, they like heat and lack of water and not too rich soil. Well, it got it - perhaps not the heat - but it is planted in a narrow bit of border close to a south-facing fence at the top of a slope. The give-away to what a plant likes is often in the leaves. Apparently silvery coloured leaves indicate that they like dry climates, Mediterranean conditions. While my garden is hardly Mediterranean with its rain and freezing cold, it just goes to show that as long as the soil is very free draining and doesn't get waterlogged, you can grow plants like these. It's rather beautiful, even without the flowers, don't you think? You cannot see from the photograph but the mound is about 12-14 inches high and the same across.
I also bought a Hollyhock in a tiny pot, for not much money, about £1.99. I hadn't realised that they were perennials, you know. So I was very pleased to discover that if I am lucky and look after it, then my hollyhock, Chater's Yellow, which I planted last year, will come up every year. Now, I have it in a pot next to the shed and I didn't think it would be very happy but I have nowhere else to plant it really. I cannot have it sticking up like a sore thumb amid the roses, it just wouldn't have looked right. Anyway, this year it has pushed up some lovely healthy leaves so with a bit of sunshine I might get yellow flowers on a 5-6ft stem yet again this year.
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| Brunera Macrophylla 'Jack Frost' |
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| Brunera Macrophylla 'Jack Frost' |
Lychnis coronaria Occulata
- its leaves covered with silver hairs
Lychnis coronaria Occulata
in flower
I also bought a Hollyhock in a tiny pot, for not much money, about £1.99. I hadn't realised that they were perennials, you know. So I was very pleased to discover that if I am lucky and look after it, then my hollyhock, Chater's Yellow, which I planted last year, will come up every year. Now, I have it in a pot next to the shed and I didn't think it would be very happy but I have nowhere else to plant it really. I cannot have it sticking up like a sore thumb amid the roses, it just wouldn't have looked right. Anyway, this year it has pushed up some lovely healthy leaves so with a bit of sunshine I might get yellow flowers on a 5-6ft stem yet again this year.
Hollyhock Chater's Yellow