Five or six years ago, enough time for the Peruvian Feather Grass to scatter its offspring to the places it wants to be, I was given a solitary plant of Stipa pseudoichu (main image). It was gifted by Rob and Gussy Macdougall of Arvensis Perennials as a thank you for an order I’d placed for Hillside. I winkled it into the rubble that makes up the front drive to see what it was made of. 

I’d not grown it before, but saw it in plume shortly afterwards in the heat and the dry of the Beth Chatto Garden. It was the August symposium afterparty, when we were allowed to wander the garden into the dusk, and it was standing resplendent amongst less resilient plants to make its companions look rather tired after enduring a dry Essex summer. It was one of those moments when you felt that you were meant to meet and the little wisp I’d planted in the drive rubble that spring suddenly grew larger in my mind.