Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
Camellia japonica Desire – a semi-double camellia photographed today and a classy customer with a centre in warm shades of ivory and ice cream – while just a couple of days ago, she was more wholly shell-pink and decidedly frosty. The edges of the formally arranged petals are blushed pink, giving a beautiful bi-colour effect.…
Continue reading ➞ Shades of Desire
Happy Valentines Day from your Secret Admirer.... ... this is Primula Belarina® Valentine, a recent introduction (well, new to me -) with fully double flowers of deepest red, forming neat rosettes and contrasting beautifully with the collar of fresh green leaves. A very appropriate bloom for the day.
The deeply luminous Hellebore Anna's Red - big plants with big flowers and all in a rich ruby red. The cultivar is only a few years old but specimens bulk up nicely, with outward facing and nodding flowers held on tall stems. A real star and a favourite of mine, ever since I saw it…
Continue reading ➞ Anna’s Red, Candy Love & Angel Glow…. more Hellebores!
Primlets, a very pretty but extremely tough addition to the family of primroses and polyanthus and at your garden centre now - dark green, textured leaved subtly scented evergreen in milder areas a rainbow of colours double, rosebud flowers edible flowers full shade to part/bright shade in the garden and great for containers flowering December…
Continue reading ➞ Primlets – sweetheart rosebuds in sorbet colours
Rhododendron nobleanum album - at least two specimens on Battleston Hill at RHS Wisley were in flower when I last visited a couple of weeks ago - this old variety will flower anytime between January and March and perhaps even later, after the last frosts. Mid-January, it was the first of the rhododendrons I saw…
Continue reading ➞ Rhododendron nobleanum album – an early flowering beauty
Hermaphrodite Skimmias offer, if it needs to be said, the best of both worlds - self-fertile plants with flower and fruit. Here are two - Skimmia japonica Temptation and a form of Skimmia japonica subsp. reveesiana - Chilan Choice. Admittedly the flowers are not the Main Event that they are with, say, Skimmia rubella or…
Continue reading ➞ I can resist everything but (Skimmia) Temptation
The seasons begin their shift towards Spring - isn't it noticeably lighter, later, already - and Hellebores will be coming to the fore. Certainly a plant that can be the subject of (more than) a mild addiction. Penny's Pink Plant breeder Rodney Davey gives us this beauty - Penny's Pink - and another (my favourite)…
Continue reading ➞ Hellebore Heaven – Penny’s Pink and Pirouette
The Japanese Garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Beautiful here in mid-winter, with sculpted box, evergreen waves of Liriope muscari, flowering Iris unguicularis, clipped Pachysandra terminalis, Cotoneaster and Callicarpa in berry, a few choice Chaenomeles flowers, beautifully spreading Winter Cherry - Prunus subhirtella Autumnalis, sunshine and raked gravel. http://www.kew.org/heritage/places/japaneselandscape.html
Cyclamen africanum One of my favourite place in Kew, the dramatic clam-shell of the Davies Alpine House - though if I am honest, I prefer the more traditional layout at RHS Wisley, with a matched pair of raised benches and specimen pots sunk into sand. The plants are all at just the right viewing height…
Continue reading ➞ Cyclamen, three ways…
The Teddington Gardener 