In the interests of fortifying the intention of this Plant of the Week blog to avoid being an impartation of expertise, and to instead facilitate the gathering of reader’s insights and experience, I ...
Is it laziness or lack of originality that has botanists naming a plant for its likeness to another? I’m scarily like my older brother, but am so glad my mother didn’t take the easy route and na ...
I love the name Perovskia. With a slight roll on the ‘r’ you can’t help but sound kind of Russian as you say it. So it’s a bit disappointing to find that Perovskia atriplicifolia (Russian ...
‘What are the black uprights?’ This question from a Facebook follower prompted the thought that while it’s well past the floral peak of Digitalis ferruginea, its contribution to the garden right ...
I vividly recall nearing the end of a slow, slow walk though the sun-bleached grounds of the Villa San Giuliano in Sicily, and stepping into the dim, sepulchral light of the family chapel. For many ...
OK, so this is a risky one. For Plant of the Week, I mean. Firstly garlic chives – Allium tuberosum – is a cheap and easy herb. Once a plant has proven useful we seem to habitually see it in ...
It recently occurred to me that every Plant of the Week I have profiled so far has been an evergreen shrub. This is seriously off-brand for me, because I am normally all about flowers. It is beyond ti ...
Christopher Lloyd would have been 100 today. He was, without doubt, the single biggest ‘input’ into my gardening experience. I will never forget that moment when I casually flipped open a bor ...
Writing that piece last week about how useful it would be to have info about the extent to which a plant’s performance is compromised by drought (and not just whether it’ll survive the challenge) ...
I’m guessing that you know Melianthus major. As a shrub, there’s nothing else even faintly like it. The most prominent and valuable characteristic are its pinnate pewter-green leaves, which in ...
It’s not surprising that one of the things we consistently want to understand about a plant is its drought tolerance. But it’s not at all clear what we mean by that. The default position is to e ...
I love that so much talk in garden design is about bringing the outside in. And that gardeners (mostly) have a deep longing to be more intimate with, and more familiar with, nature. But when it comes ...
First, let’s establish that we at The Gardenist don’t deliberately choose impossible-to-source plants for our Plant of the Week. It may appear that way. But name me an interesting plant that i ...
It’s not surprising that plants that you yearn for but have no hope of growing are infused with a sense of magic and mystery. What is surprising is that even some plants that you can grow can reta ...
Once you’ve seen Dierama pulcherrimum, the so-called ‘fairy’s fishing rod’, you never forget it. And it’s not like anything else at all. It’s unique in the plant world. No other plant ...
I first became acquainted with and thoroughly fell for Verbena bonariensis (tall verbena) around 20 years ago, when my sister came from the UK to live outside Canberra. She planted it in her paddock-t ...
It seems difficult to remember a time before the use of ornamental grasses in the garden. However, there are some gardeners out there who remember that at one stage the only good grass in a garden was ...
Annuals don’t often feature on our Plant of the Week. We too easily consider them horticultural lightweights. But their sense of seizing the day – of making the most of the moment – calls us ...