Experienced gardener and thoroughly good egg, Louise Sims shares some of her favourite plants as they come into their own through the year
After that ferociously hard winter, I have nonetheless found silver linings in our garden, and probably we all have. Many evergreen shrubs were amongst the hardest hit, and for us these were the large euphorbias, a particularly massive Teucrium fruticans and the hebes. However, the former are now showing green shoots which is cheering, but the […]
‘Dainty’, ‘delightful’, ‘quietly attractive’, ‘trendy’, ‘slow spreading’, ‘neat clumps’, ‘likes damp shade’. All these descriptions are to be found when you google this gorgeous looking woodland grass, and doesn’t it sound just the job? As it’s often used in Chelsea show gardens, I bet a lot of people have rushed out to buy it. And, […]
sweet cicely I’ve grown sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) for as long as I can remember. I have no recollection of when or where I first bought it, it’s just always been a part of my gardening (and cooking) life. Not dissimilar to cow parsley, sweet cicely is also a British native but I’ve never seen […]
perennial honesty What colour is mauve? Now there’s an interesting question – it’s the colour of my chosen plant today. I’ve been reading a little about its origins and history and I’ve found some quite funny anecdotes including that apparently the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler once called mauve “just pink trying to be purple”! I always […]
Iris pallida ‘Argentea Variegata’ – Dalmatian iris ‘Argentea Variegata’ Even in springtime, when all around are the mounds of soft, fresh green foliage that makes this season so captivating, the accent of a good spiky plant cannot be underestimated; and especially one that is sufficiently hardy to have come through such a harsh winter unscathed and […]
oso berry- Indian plum Unable (and a bit frustrated) as we are to grow such elegant spring flowering shrubs as corylopsis pauciflora and stachyurus praecox (because we are on heavy neutral clay and they like acid soil), I am delighted to say that my chosen plant today is happy and easy to grow in almost any soil. This hardy […]
Armand clematis This is a beautiful clematis with a heavenly scent – vanilla by common consent or, as one of my gardening friends says, like the soap shelf at M&S! So why haven’t I chosen it before today? Because it’s usually flowering several metres up and sometimes I don’t even remember it’s there! Ours is growing […]
Giraldi’s forsythia Whilst our lawn and indeed the bare earth beneath shrubs and trees in the garden are becoming increasingly bedecked with snowdrops, crocuses, hellebores and other spring treasures, I am looking for something a little showy and springlike at head height and this forsythia seems to fill that need. We planted it along time […]
barrenwort ‘Fröhnleiten’ If, like ours, your garden has been subject to yet more frosts this week, then you might have been enjoying such delights as my subject today. I do realise that I might be over enthusiastic about walking round the garden in winter but this is precisely why I love it. This barrenwort is […]
I won’t deny that taking my early morning walk around the garden these days, is becoming more of a ‘stock taking’ exercise. Let’s face it, few of us have experienced a year like the last for decades, and I find myself re-evaluating the meaning of ‘hardy’. After record breaking temperatures last summer, a very mild […]
Yunnan liquorice I love a coincidence and here we have one. Once again most of us are waking up to a very hard frost, or even snow, and I am impelled to go outside into the garden and observe all the amazing shapes and patterns that only reveal themselves under such conditions. And while I […]
Dogwood ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’ Getting on for a year ago, I was striding through the rain towards middle growbag Laura’s front door and not for the first time I stopped to admire ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’. Then as luck would have it, Laura rang me a couple of days later to say that she had spotted a couple […]
Crown of thorns I have a confession to make, and I may lose friends saying so, but I am not a fan of poinsettias! To me they are the battery chickens of the horticultural world: propagated en masse, probably at great cost to the environment, and about as original a Christmas present as a chocolate […]
Marguerite ‘Jamaica Primrose’ The temperature dropped just below freezing in our barely heated greenhouse last night; this is hardly surprising as outside in the garden it was minus 6.8 degrees, and this, after the warmest November on record. But what a cheery welcome I received as I walked, with some fear and trepidation, through the greenhouse door this morning. Understandably all the other plants looked a little pinched but not this amazing marguerite. […]
It was the sweet scent on the air that first caught my attention when Growbag Laura and I wandered around Derry Watkins’ inspirational garden near Bath: the sort of scent that demands that you discover its source. I wasn’t really expecting it to come from an aquatic plant but was led in the direction of a small pond, almost covered by a carpet of […]
wedding flower Beth Chatto was one of the best known and most inspirational gardeners of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and consequently her garden and nursery have become a sort of plant mecca to the rest of us. But it was her late husband Andrew’s lifelong interest in ecology that helped to establish the ‘right plant, right place’ mantra to which she adhered, and to which we […]
glossy abelia At a time when every gardener I talk to is commenting on unusual flowering events in their gardens, I have been enjoying a shrub which reliably performs at the same time every year, no matter what the weather throws at it! No photograph seems to do it justice but its common name, the glossy […]
Japanese anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ I was just fizzing as I drove home from Great Dixter plant fair last weekend, and the image of all those amazing, brightly coloured, autumn flowering beauties remained with me for days. I need this end-of-season fix to take me through the rather sombre month of November. Inevitably there were purchases that had to be made, and […]
liquorice plant As the temperature dropped close to zero last night, I am reminded that we don’t have long to enjoy the last few weeks of our tender summer plants in containers; they are of course at their peak right now, and I’ll be looking long and hard at the most successful combinations, maybe even […]
Himalayan fairy grass This morning there was a definite chill in the air. Summer has surely given way to autumn, and this is the time of year when the ornamental grasses come into their own. In the average sized garden, it’s a mistake to grow too many different ones together, as they then lose their individual impact; so autumn is the perfect season to visit a few […]
hybrid strawberry tree? I first saw this beautiful tree at Kew Gardens a very long time ago, but the impression made by its peeling cinnamon-brown bark was a lasting one, and when Rob and I were making important choices about trees for our new garden, it was one of the first to go on the list! […]
cone flower ‘Henry Eilers’ These drought-dry days, it is with some trepidation that I wander out into the garden. It is in some respects a sorry sight, but I am heartened by the tenacity of certain survivors. They are not just surviving, some of them look quite unaffected by the lack of rain, and my subject today is just […]
Clematis ‘Huldine’ has been around for a while; it was raised in France in the 1900s and then apparently was given to William Robinson at Gravetye Manor, where Ernest Markham was head gardener for a time. Hardy, robust and strong growing (it can attain 4 metres), it’s a good choice to grow through a small […]
Prairie mallow ‘Elsie Heugh’ – A cool customer this one, and that’s quite something to be able to say after the week we’ve had! Yet how often have I read that sidalceas prefer moist but well drained soil in full sun – surely this is wishful thinking for most of us? As gardeners we just do what we can, and I put its fresh and happy demeanour down to a good layer […]
Miller abutilon We are now in full blown summer, and anything grows! Abutilons have a habit of grabbing your attention because the flowers are so exotic and so copiously produced; some of them also have the ability to flower well into October and even November. You may not be familiar with the many different colours they come in; from pure white through pale mauve, bluey purple, pink, peachy, to many shades […]
false mallow syn. Malvastrum lateritium In 1987, when I attended a course in garden design at the Chelsea Physic Garden, James Compton was the head gardener, and in the same year he published a book called ‘Success with Unusual Plants’. I love this book: it’s full of interesting and unfamiliar plants, amongst which is Modiolastrum […]
Also known as rose ‘Madame Boll’ I’m sure we’d all agree that the month of June is synonymous with roses. So many to choose from, but in our garden at least, seriously few places left to grow new ones; so a few years ago we did our research and even went to the Royal National Rose Society Gardens, near St Alban’s, to help us make our choice. (Sadly, the gardens went into administration in 2017 […]
I have to confess that I was never a big fan of geums until I came across ‘Totally Tangerine’ growing in a friend’s garden. That year I visited her a few times during the spring and summer and each time I went I was more and more impressed by it: it was always in flower, upright, taller than most (80-90 cms), healthy, and just glowed! This beautiful orange cultivar is sterile, which means […]
Shinyleaf yellowhorn, Chinese flowering chestnut What wouldn’t I do for The3Growbags? Last week we had scaffolding against the house and normally I wouldn’t be seen anywhere near a ladder above six feet, let alone stand on six-metre-high scaffolding, but one morning I glanced up and there was the captivating sight of Xanthoceras sorbifolium in full flower. And it was spectacular! I realised that here was an opportunity that rarely occurs. So I crawled out of our […]
Cut-leaf crabapple Sometimes, quite unexpectedly you come across a plant that is so stunning, it becomes etched into your memory, and this exceptional tree is just one of those. I first saw it at RHS Wisley; it was autumn, and we were wandering through the model gardens (possibly they no longer feature there now?), when I turned a corner and saw this perfect picture of glowing autumn colour in the late afternoon sunshine. Its golden yellow leaves […]
snake’s head fritillary Our snake’s head fritillaries have been in flower for weeks and it’s been a bumper year. In early spring as the narrow grass-like leaves emerge in long grass, they can be hard to spot, but these bulbous perennials are tough and reliable,despite their fragile looking appearance. Opinions vary as to whether it’s a British native or not, but there are sites […]
Arrowwood ‘Diana’ I can forgive a plant almost anything if it has a good scent, and this gorgeous shrub reminds me that we are in full spring mode, it’s no longer late winter even if the weather is trying to tell us otherwise at the moment! The waxy flowers of Viburnam carlesii ‘Diana’ are rosy red in bud, opening to pink, and then fading to white as they age; they are exceptionally fragrant, and therefore worth planting […]
Sibthorp primrose This little beauty can be ignored no longer. It started coming into flower in early February, and every time I pass it, I think to myself what an absolute joy it is; not shouty but quite unmissable. Despite its diminutive size – a scant ten centimetres high – it has proven robust, tolerant, and long lived, and over the summer months it disappears from […]
Three decades ago, when our so-called lawn was little more than a rectangle of rough grass and before we planted our walnut tree, in between doing battle with bindweed, changing nappies and keeping rabbits at bay, I would sometimes try to introduce some sort of coherence into my plans for spring bulbs. But I rarely got beyond grabbing a few random crocus at the local […]
Gold-edged winter daphne This year our lovely daphne is coming into flower at least two weeks later than usual which is hardly surprising given the number of frosts we’ve had so far this winter. ‘Aureomarginata’ is a neat evergreen shrub with shiny, gold-edged leaves, and is probably best grown in dappled shade. It will reach 1-1.5 metres but let no one tell you that this Daphne is slow growing, for when I referred to my trusty garden diary, I saw that I […]
Sweet box Also known as Christmas box, these are not shrubs to consign to any old corner of your garden just because they will tolerate deep shade. On the contrary, they are a great choice to plant against the north side of your home, or next to a path, or by the front or back door (whichever […]