The truth is that virtually any well-grown clematis, except perhaps the more common montana types, is likely to induce a groan of acquisitive longing from me. There’s just something so other-world ...
There are few plants more striking in the garden, right now (just pre-Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere) than the nemorosa-type salvias. They’re powerful in shape (piercingly vertical), in flor ...
I remember well receiving a packet of Orlaya grandiflora seeds from that fabulous gardener from the NSW Southern Highlands, Col Blanch, about 20 years ago. I was between houses, or some such thing, ...
The best view of our back garden is from the new clothesline. This wasn’t intentional. From the clothesline, the old metal shed barely encroaches on my peripheral vision, the green Colorbond fence ...
It’s all too rare in this age of plants with huge glossy labels for a new release to totally eclipse its horticultural predecessor. It seems like the imperative for the novel and the new trumps tr ...
Were you gardening in the days before Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ became available in Australia? I remember poring over British garden books, and yearning – like actually aching – to be able to ...
There’s been a twenty-or-so year hiatus in my growing of Geum ‘Tangerine’. Now I have it back, I wonder how I survived without it. According to the Woodbridge nursery website, it was Dennis No ...
I’m a rather reluctant fan of Tulbaghia ‘Fairy Star’. Why reluctant? Firstly, there’s that truly horrid, simpering name. Secondly, I rarely see ‘miniaturising’ of any plant as adding t ...
Quick one today, as there’s not a lot to say. I’ll let the pics do most of the talking. Everyone knows the crabapples, and if you’re after a white flowering one, you’re kind of spoiled for c ...
Please note: if you read on, you’re entering a zone lacking both experience and discernment. It’s gush, from start to finish. My white Persian lilac (Syringa x persica ‘Alba’) is in flower f ...
For years – I mean decades – I’ve been trying to establish the difference between Echium fastuosum and Echium candicans. And now it appears that the names are synonymous. Yes, that makes it mu ...
Yesterday at the nursery in which I work a small group of locals had congregated for chat, in a socially distanced outdoor space for Covid times . Knowing one or two within the group I joined in, espe ...
One of the faults that plagues rosemaries is their default desaturated grey-blue flowers. This can look fabulous when working with a very restrained dry-plant palette, but can just look plain dowdy ...
I remember turning up in London, for my first time, in April 1991, and the only things in flower in the otherwise bare front gardens as I was driven from the airport were Viburnum tinus and Forsythia. ...
Euphorbia hereby becomes the most heavily represented genus in this list. And really, what would we do without them? The evergreen types all send up new, fresh young shoots from the base during flower ...
What is it about humans that we undervalue stuff that comes too easily, and over-rate stuff that eludes us? Whether its relationships, skills or garden plants, the principle applies. The miniature d ...
Back when I was living with the family in Northern Ireland (as you do, for twelve months, when you just feel like your life needs a bit of adventure), we discovered some lollies named ‘Parma violets ...
One Mediterranean climate flowering shrub I would not be without is the red flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum. You might associate it with English gardens, but actually this shrub is native to parts ...