Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
With lovely short spikes of blue-violet blooms and low mounds of highly serrated foliage, this fern-like plant is going to be great for use in containers, front-of-border spots and path edging. It was bred in the US by Washington plantswoman Christy Hensler by crossing Veronica ‘Crater Lake Blue’ with Veronica prostrata. Foliage reaches a manageable 6-9…
Continue reading ➞ Veronica ‘Christy’
A rather wonderful, cushion-mound of mossy evergreen foliage, Saxifrage 'Pixie Rose', is a miniature showstopper when in flower (ie. now and into Summer). Foliage little more than 10cm tall, with a spread of up to 30cm, with star-shaped flowers straining upwards. One for an Alpine bed, scree or rockery, with humus rich, moist but…
Continue reading ➞ Saxifrage Pixie Rose
I've posted about this elegant, arching Spring flowering perennial, recently changing its name from Dicentra to Lamprocapnos (trills off the tongue doesn't it?). Let's settle on Bleeding Heart. An unusual photograph for the concentration of flower, usually seen in, well, single, elegant arches. A bit of a cheat since there were about a dozen…
Continue reading ➞ You say Lamprocapnos, I say Dicentra….
See the humble aquilegia, Granny's Bonnet, a favourite cottage garden plant, single and double forms, familiar names like Nora Barlow, pale pastels though even sultry forms like Black Barlow, William Guinness. Now see the State Series (Montana, Oregon, Louisiana, Virginia, Florida, Alaska et al). Imagine that Grandma took a flight to America, bought a…
Continue reading ➞ Have a nice day… Aquilegia State Series
More bluebells you might think, but nearing this muted haze, you realise they are much, much taller, a massed planting of something different, flower-heads matched in height by umbels of cow parsley. Camassias. Now I see the point of these plants! One part of a walk through the various landscapes at the Royal Botanic Gardens…
Continue reading ➞ Moody blues…
Bluebell time at Kew.
It’s cherry blossom season. Here’s a poem called "Loveliest of Trees" by A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936). The poem is about cherry blossoms, the quickness of life, and how now is the time to appreciate what’s around you. "Loveliest of Trees" LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough,…
Continue reading ➞ The loveliest of trees
One of the most extraordinary flowering trees, with pea-like blossom, hugger-mugger on bare stems, on the previous year's wood and main branches. This specimen in the heart of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in the Mediterranean landscape, the purple of the Judas tree contrasted with the golden-yellow of the Cistus x purpureus. Inversely heart…
Continue reading ➞ Judas tree – Cercis siliquastrum
The Teddington Gardener 