The first posy of March was picked last week, ahead of the cold north-easterlies and the snow that plunged us back into winter. The galanthus, the primroses and the wild narcissus that just last week were tilted in bud, are buried now in snowdrifts as March comes in, roaring like a lion. In the garden the hunt for new life has also been halted, but we have gained the time to seek out the minutiae of change. Newly visible buds, stark and green against the whiteout on the hawthorn and the Cornus mas in full and oblivious flower.
The Pulmonaria rubra stirred early in January and, beneath the snow they are already flushed with bloom. I was given a clump by our neighbour Jane and, having never grown it before, I can confirm that it is a doer. The silvered and spotted-leaved lungworts are arguably more dramatic, for they provide a textured foil and foliage that is easily as valuable as their spring show of flower. Give them shade and summer moisture and they will reward you, but the slightest sign of drought and they will sadly succumb to mildew. It is important, therefore, to find them a place that keeps cool. Pulmonaria rubra, however, seems altogether more adaptable and when the thaw comes they will flower unhalting until summer.
Pulmonaria rubra
Despite its modest presence – it has plain, green foliage and soft, coral flowers – I have enjoyed its willingness and ease on the sunny banks close to the studio where, from the veranda, you can hear the buzz of bumblebees. They love it, as do the first early honeybees and the heavy soil there suits it too. So far it has taken the sun and dry summer weather with no more than a little flagging in midday heat. I have planned for shade with the young Salix purpurea ‘Nancy Saunders’ that grow alongside and for there to be hellebores there when I have the shade for sure. The lungwort and the Lenten roses will be good in combination and we have experimented here in the bunch with a spotted dusky pink hybrid, whose colouring makes something more of the lungwort. This year it became clear that the red hellebores are just that bit later than the blacks, greens, yellows and picotees, whose earlier buds were ravaged by mice. Sometimes disasters teach you as much as triumphs.
Helleborus x hybridus Single Pink Blotched
The last of the winter is held in the Bergenia purpurascens which colours from a deep, coppery green to the colour and shine of oxblood leather in the cold months. This form, which I first saw growing in Beth Chatto’s gravel garden, was initially called ‘Helen Dillon’ after the Irish plantswoman and gardener, but has now been renamed ‘Irish Crimson’. I like it for the scale of the leaf which is finely drawn and held upright to catch the winter sun.
Though bergenia are a stalwart of shade, it is worth finding Bergenia purpurascens a position in sunshine so that the leaves can be backlit in winter. The glowing foliage makes up for the absence of flower elsewhere and is a foil to the first bulbs. I have just one clump which is slowly increasing, but I plan to split it on a year on/year off basis to have enough to mingle it with fine stemmed Narcissus jonquilla and white violets. Though bergenias are tough and reliable, I have found that they are magnets for vine weevil. The tell-tale notches to the edge of the leaf are made by the adult and these signs will show you that there are grubs eating the roots. An autumn application of nematodes should help in controlling the problem if it develops.
Bergenia purpurascens ‘Irish Crimson’
Salix gracilistyla ‘Melanostachys’
Salix gracilistyla ‘Melanostachys’ is an easy, compact plant which I’ve chosen to grow hard in the gravel surrounding the drive. It has lustrous stems that start out green before turning blood red and throwing out coal-black catkins from early February. They are a surprise and a delight and, some time in the next couple of weeks, each will push out a glowing halo of red anthers. For now, they are planted up at their base with Erigeron karvinskianus to cover until they bulk up. They won’t take long to reach a metre or so in all directions. As they shade out the erigeron, I have also included Viola odorata for its willingness to take their place in the shade. Next year I will add snowdrops to provide a contrast to the darkness of the willow. They will be easy to keep to a waist high bush with the longest growth being pruned out for catkins as an accompaniment to the last of the winter or the first of the spring pickings.
___________________________________
In memory of
Enid Brett Morgan
28 March 1937 – 28 February 2018
I picked this posy last Sunday with mum on my mind. My brother was looking after her, giving me a day’s respite from sharing the care of her at home at the end of her life. I didn’t know then that she would leave us so quickly this week. However, looking at the spareness and sombreness of this arrangement now, shows me that somewhere deep down I did. Mum loved hellebores. Coral and old rose were two of her favourite colours.
Huw Morgan
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 3 March 2018
Last Monday we awoke to a pristine frost, the first of the year. It lay heavy, sweeping up to tickle the grassy banks, but sparing the giant dahlia in the shelter of the barn. For now. I was up early, the moon still in the sky, to check on the pelargoniums which I’d moved in under cover of the open barn the night before. It was the beginning of the season’s change. From now on the garden will drop back and recede into winter.
In the seven years we have been here this shift has happened almost exactly to the week, but with every year there has been increasingly more to draw from in the garden. Despite the freeze that saw tender nasturtiums wilted and the dahlias in the open blackened, we are far from done in terms of interest. The grasses have come into their own as the colour of flower fades elsewhere. Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’ is of particular note, but it has taken this long to reach its current perfection. The last few weeks have seen this late season grass at its best, the smoky panicles forming a mist amongst the perennials. As the weather has cooled, the foliage has now coloured too, a deep mahogany red.
Foliage of Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
Picked in a bunch the flowers of the panicum act much as they do in the planting to veil their companions and create graphic sweeps with their flamed foliage. Almost anything works in this moody suspension of colour and here we have it with the very last of the Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Glow’. This short-lived perennial is easily raised from seed. Indeed, the plants that I have in the picking beds are variable for exactly this reason. A mix of embers and charcoal, black over red or orange, with some more fiery than others. Desite the strength of colour the impression is light for the flowers are small and held freely with room between each other. In my experience the freer draining the ground in the winter, the more likely you are to keep it. A pinch of seed, taken now and sown early under cover, will ensure that you have it next year.
Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Glow’
The Coronilla valentina subsp. glauca ‘Citrina’ has a second season of flower once the weather starts cooling, its honeyed perfume noticeable quite some distance away. I have it planted by the path so that it is easy to inhale a big lungful. This modest, woody perennial is usually at its best in early spring, flowering prodigiously in March and April and then on into early summer after a warm winter. I put this second push down to youthful exuberance and do not expect the plants to keep this up for more than three years. In the third summer I will take cuttings and replace them in new positions for they are sure to exhaust themselves. Their presence is always light and delightful, the pale yellow pea flowers darker on the lip than the keel. If you can find them a sunny free-draining position, they are easy.
Coronilla valentina subsp. glauca ‘Citrina’
Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis is one of my favourite late season perennials. I grew them first in the Peckham garden, where they seeded freely into the shale I used for the paths. Their presence is light early in the year and, like the panicums, they take some time to come into their own in the latter half of the growing season. Grow them in a little shade or on the cool side of a building for the emerald green in the leaf to set off the maroon chevron of warpaint to best advantage. Out in the sun, the green pales and can look insipid and, as the greater part of the joy in this plant is the foliage, it is worth finding it just the right place. That said, the spires of tiny flowers are worth the wait, forming a pink haze that is hard to pin down at first, but bright and easily detectable once you find the miniature flowers scaling their wiry spires.
Foliage of Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis
Flower spike of Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis
Berries of Malus transitoria
Our Malus transitoria coloured a bright, buttery yellow this year, before the leaves were stripped by gales to leave the berries hanging delicately in their thousands. The tiny amber beads, which darken to a reddish tan as they ripen, are perfectly bite-sized for the birds and every morning they are full of fluttering life. At this teetering point between the seasons this is a moment worth eking out and savouring. A last flash of life before winter gets its grip and competition for the berries will see them vanish with the last of the flowers.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photos: Huw Morgan
Published 11 November 2017
For the first three or four years here we grew row upon row of dahlias in the old vegetable garden. They soaked up the light in the first half of summer and flung it back again in a riot of colour later. We grew upwards of fifty, with rejects making way for new varieties from one year to the next to test the best and the most favoured. The dahlias were completely out of character with what I knew I wanted to do here but, like children in a sweetshop, we had the space to play and so we indulged.
Three years of experimentation left us gorged and satiated, but a handful made it through to become keepers. All singles, and delicate enough to be worked into the naturalism of the new planting, we kept Dahlia coccinea ‘Dixter’ for sheer stamina of performance, Dahlia merckii ‘Alba’, the most delicate of all, and the demurely nodding Dahlia australis. Proving to be perfectly hardy with a straw mulch as insurance against the cold they have made good garden perennials. The exception is a scarlet cactus dahlia that outshone the blaze of competition in the trial. Originally bought as ‘Hillcrest Royal’, but mis-supplied, we grew it in our old garden in Peckham and loved it enough to bring it with us and, then again, to keep it in the cutting garden. Unable to identify it correctly after many years of sleuthing we named it ‘Talfourd Red’ after the south London road we lived on and I cannot imagine an autumn now without its flaring fingers.
Dahlia ‘Talfourd Red’ and Dahlia coccinea ‘Dixter’
I do like a new plant, and getting to know Tithonia rotundifolia for the first time this year is enabling me to see how it might be used to inject some late summer heat into a planting. We already have a handful of favourites here that are tried and trusted and loved for their intensity of colour, which builds as the growing season wanes. In the case of the Tropaeolum majus ‘Mahogany’, they are almost at their best sprawling and vibrant in the damp cooling days and allowed to climb into their neighbours. The seed originally came from the garden of Mien Ruys at least twenty years ago. I had gone with two friends on an inspirational trip to see what was happening in naturalistic gardens in Holland and Germany and we stopped to meet her in her wonderful garden. The seed was scattered on the pavement over which it was sprawling and a few found their way, with her consent, into my pocket.
This ‘Mahogany’ is not what you will get if you look for it in the seed catalogues. Indeed, it now seems to be unavailable apart from in the United States and ‘Mahogany Gleam’ is a different thing altogether. The leaves are a brighter more luminous green than usual and the flowers a jewel-like ruby red. I have been territorial ever since I started to grow it and winkle out any that come up with a darker leaf or paler flower. It self-seeds willingly every spring, letting you know when the soil is warm enough to sow and where the warmest parts of the vegetable garden are. The seedlings exhibit the same bright foliage so it is easy to weed out the occasional rogue, which might have reverted to the darker more typical green. We currently grow ‘Mahogany’ in the kitchen garden amongst the asparagus and use the leaves and flowers to garnish salad.
Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Torch’
Tropaeolum majus ‘Mahogany’
Close by, and growing this year in two old stoneware water filters, is Tagetes patula. This wild form will grow up to three or four feet with a little support or something to lean on and flowers from June until it is frosted. The colour is absolutely pure and as vibrant and saturated a saffron yellow as you can find. It is easily germinated from seed under cover in spring and fast, so best to wait until mid-April to sow. I harvest my own seed and keep it apart from the dark, velvety Tagetes ‘Cinnabar’ (main image), which it will taint. Seedlings that have crossed will no longer have the deep richness that makes this latter plant so remarkable. I was disappointed to find this spring that the mice had eaten all the seed I’d left out in the tool shed and was expecting to have the first of many years without it. However, as luck would have it and quite out of the blue, they somehow found their way some distance into the new herb garden. Maybe it was mice doing me a favour with the plants I left standing in the kitchen garden last winter. Another lesson learned.
Tagetes patula
Tagetes ‘Cinnabar’
Pelargonium ‘Stadt Bern’
My father was never afraid of colour and always commented on the brilliance of Pelargonium ‘Stadt Bern’, which is the best, most brilliant red I have ever come across. Purer for the flowers being properly single, with elegant tear-shaped petals and thrown into relief against darkly zoned foliage. I bought a tray of plants from Covent Garden Market twenty five years ago for my Bonnington Square roof garden and have managed to keep them going ever since. Given how archetypal it is for a pot geranium I have no idea why it is not more freely available, but there are always a handful of cuttings in the frame which are for giving away to friends, who are given these precious things on the understanding they are part of keeping a good thing going, and that they are my insurance for any unexpected losses.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 23 September 2017
The last week has seen a subtle shift, with a hint of the next season in the air. With cool nights and mist lolling in the hollows, the garden is between two seasons. The brilliant lythrum spires have finally run out of bud and, like sparklers fizzing their length, are suddenly extinguished. The dry days have been spun with the flock from the white rosebay willow herb caught on the breeze. I have planted it on the edges of the garden to blur the boundaries and, after weeks of flower, it is finally running to seed. I know it will need managing as it is a prodigious runner, but thank goodness it is not like our pink native Chamaenerion angustifolium, for the the seed is sterile.
This week’s bunch is a push against this mood, which can all too easily descend as summer runs out of steam and autumn is yet to take over. Over the years I’ve learned to plan for the between seasons lull and now no longer fear it. The Angelica sylvestris is a perfect example of a plant that steps in to fill the gap. In the ditch where we have cleared the damp ground of bramble they are now seeding freely. Although this wetland native has been wonderful since the spring, with it’s coppery foliage and architectural loftiness, the month of August is really its moment. It has been all but invisible for a while, with the grasses staking their position earlier on, but now the pristine umbels are held amongst their spent, tawny seedheads.
Angelica sylvestris
Some years, when we walk the ditch early in the season, you can spot a particularly fine form with dark, plum-coloured foliage. The dark stems are always a lovely feature of the Angelica but, coupled with dark leaves, they can not be bettered. Each year I mean to save seed of the best forms, but have never remembered to mark the plants before they are over and browned to skeletons. This autumn I plan to bring a selection called ‘Vicar’s Mead’ into the damper, lower slopes of the new garden. I have grown it without success in London, where it was too dry for it and mildew took its toll, but I trust the ground to be hearty enough here. Though biennial Angelica sylvestris will seed freely and, as long as you leave a number of seedlings, you will always get a succession.
In the garden, I have a particularly lovely form of the perennial Angelica edulis, which is planted through the white Persicaria amplexicaule. The substance and loftiness of the umbels with their horizontal conclusion is a good compliment to the finely drawn verticals, which echo the now spent grasses that surround the angelicas in the ditch. Persicaria is a mainstay of my plantings, which I have depended on for years. Happy with the cool of company at the root and with its head out in the sun, its lush foliage is an excellent team player. Good for the first half of the summer with its overlapping shield-shaped leaves, you know the season is progressing when the first spires arrive at the end of July. Again, August is their month, but they will sail through September and still be firing away in October with the asters. Here, for contrast with the blue, is a new favourite, Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’, which is tall enough to be making its way through the Verbena macdougalii ‘Lavender Spires’, and is an enlivening shade of hot pink.
Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’
The Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’ is a late-season grass. Slow to get started in the early summer and needing space early on so as not to be overwhelmed by early-into-leaf companions. An American native known as Switch Grass, it is happiest on lean ground and in bright conditions. Here it is better in soil that is drier or it will lean and topple. I have it on the upper, free-draining slopes where it is already showing colour with reddened tips to the foliage. The plum-coloured flowering panicles are so fine and delicate that you can see through their dusky framework. By the end of the month they will ascend to a final height of about a metre and will then go on to colour brilliantly in October, fiery and lit with their own inner light it seems.
Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
I have them planted close, but not too close, to the Cirsium canum, which is as lush as the grass is fine. I bought this perennial thistle from Special Plants where Derry Watkins has it growing in her garden. She swore then that it wasn’t a seeder, as I had been stung by its similar cousin, the native Cirsium tuberosum. The latter has now been banished from the garden to the ditch banks for bad behaviour in the seeding department and, for the past three years, has been kept in check by the competition. When I last saw Derry and asked her if her C. canum had started to seed she said, “a little”, which was due caution, so I will raze my plants when the main show is over to avoid the inevitable. Their stature, reach and poise are beautiful though, the brilliant pink thimbles of flower spotting colour in mid-air just above our heads and humming with bees.
Cirsium canum
Succisa pratensis
Though at an altogether smaller scale, the Devil’s Bit Scabious has a similar feeling in the suspension of flower on wiry stems. Another native, Succisa pratensis is a late-performing meadow dweller, happiest where the soil is moist and picking up where many other natives have gone over in August. My original plant, a dark blue selection called ‘Derby Purple’ was the parent of the seedlings in this bunch. They came easily from seed, germinating the same autumn they were sown and flowering just a year later in the new plantings. Although the flowers are darker than the native, they are not as rich as their parent, but they are a wonderful thing to have hovering around in this between season moment. A neat rosette of foliage, that will slowly increase and clump, is easily combined in well-mannered company. I will keep them away from the Cirsium and run them instead through the openly spaced Switch Grass and be happy in the knowledge that their contribution will help to bridge the season.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 19 August 2017
And so the balance has shifted. The energy of the race to the longest day of the year already dimming. It is a subtle change, but even now it is in evidence with the grasses going to seed in the meadows, May’s vibrant greens flattening and the first of the bindweed replacing the dogroses to light the hedgerows. The last few days of searing heat have pushed this high summer feeling still further and this bunch from the garden reflects something of the new mood.
It is with much excitement that the Romneya coulteri flowered for the first time this year, and no surprise that they chose to do so in weather that must have reminded them of home. See the Californian Tree Poppy in the southern parts of the state where it runs through the rubbly hillsides and you understand why it should be given the hottest, most free-draining position you can offer it. I have it here, facing south, at the base of the barn wall, where the soil is rarely damp for long. It is a choice position – and there are few on our hillside that offer such a baking – but it was not a difficult decision to give the space up to one of my all-time favourites.
I first saw the tree poppy growing in Brighton where it had taken over the tiny front garden of one of my father’s friends and had made the seaward-facing ground its home. Towering at eight feet or so above the pavement and all but obscuring the bay window (there was no need for curtains), from inside the house the crumpled, glistening petals were filled with summer light. The luminosity of the flowers is amplified by a yolk-yellow, globular boss of stamens which dust the petals with pollen as they flutter in the breeze. Hovering on long stalks reaching towards the sun, held amongst finely cut blue-grey foliage, they cannot help but capture all the light that is going. For me the mood they create is the epitome of summer. I have given it the space to claim this moment and have repeated it three times amongst jagged, silver cardoons and ethereal Althaea cannabina.
Romneya coulteri
Romneya hate disturbance, so you have to be sure you know where you want it and not succumb to the temptation of moving it, should it decide it likes you. I’ve found they are fickle and can easily succumb to verticillium wilt in our damp climate when they are young, so I usually build in loss and plant more than I need. Hence the repeat along the barn wall but, in this instance, all three plants have so far thrived, sulking a little in their first year, rising up to a metre or so, but remaining blind and without flower. This year they are looking much more like themselves and have begun to take their position. I’II expect them to attain full stature in a couple of years and we will see then if they start to run, as they can and do in search of new territory. However, they are easily curtailed as long as you slice the runners with a spade and are not tempted to pull the runner back to base and disturb the central root system. Although they will regenerate if the winter hasn’t been hard enough to floor last years growth, it is best to cut the stems hard to the base in March after the worst of the winter has run its course. New shoots are rapid and lush and altogether better looking.
Eryngium giganteum ‘Silver Ghost’
Gaura lindheimerei with Achillea ‘Moonshine’ & Lychnis coronaria
In the gravel, that surrounds the barns, I have been playing with a number of self-seeders to make the buildings feel like the garden has made its home there. Eryngium giganteum ‘Silver Ghost’ is one that I sowed directly from fresh seed given to me by Chris and Toby Marchant of Orchard Dene Nursery. I’d admired the plants at the nursery for their more acutely veined and crested flowers. It is showier than the species, without feeling like it has lost any charm. The common name for Eryngium giganteum, ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’, is attributed to Ellen Willmott, the English horticulturist, who was said to have carried seeds in her pockets at all times and distributed them in a trail throughout gardens she visited. If it finds a home that is to its liking, with plenty of sun and no competition to the basal rosette, this biennial is great for never being in the same place and for the chance happenings that come about when you let it find it’s own position. It is good here with the flutter of Gaura lindheimeri that creates a shimmering highlight of white, like the sparkle of light on water.
Lychnis coronaria & Achillea ‘Moonshine’
Achillea ‘Moonshine’ is a plant that I have not grown since I was a teenager, where I had it in my yellow border. It was short-lived there in the window of light that fell between the trees in our wooded garden, but I hope to keep it longer here on our sunny hillside despite its requirement for regular division. It is dancing now amongst the contrasting magenta of Lychnis coronaria in a strong wind that has kicked up after the past week’s heat, but is all but oblivious to the buffeting. Perfectly flat heads that huddle at about knee height are the ideal receptacle to harvest the high light and long days. The colour is the brightest, most vibrant sulphur yellow and, now that I see them together in a vase, its brightness further enriches the golden boss of the Romneya to saffron. A new combination for the future, perhaps (for they would surely like the same conditions) and one that would set the tone for the height of summer that is still ahead of us.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 24 June 2017
The tulips are finally over or, more to the point, we are taking control this weekend and will bring their extraordinary display to a close by lifting the bulbs and clearing the bed. As is the way with Christmas decorations, I feel almost as much pleasure in finally stripping away their ornamentation after the period of illumination and, for a moment, for there to be quiet. And, with the cool, dry weather this year, they have been flowering for a full six weeks.
We started growing tulips in earnest in the garden in Peckham, ordering a handful of varieties to fill the pots on the terraces. Each year, a favourite was kept on to get to know it better and winkled into the beds to see if it would last in the ground. That was how we discovered that we preferred ‘Sapporo’ to ‘White Triumphator’, for the fact that it ages from primrose to ivory, and it has been hard to match the perfume and vibrant tangerine of ‘Ballerina’.
When we moved here we continued to experiment, upping the number of varieties and planting the tulips in rows in the vegetable garden to slowly build an armoury of favoured varieties. As we became more confident with our experimentations and learned how to extend the season by including early, mid and late season tulips, we began a to grow them altogether differently.
Tulipa ‘Sorbet’
Tulipa ‘Sorbet’
Tulipa ‘First Proud’
Tulipa ‘Perestroyka’
I was in the process of planting up a client’s walled garden and, for cutting as much as display, we created a series of mixes to play with the sheer breadth of varieties. We chose colour combinations to conjour a series of moods and colour fields, some dark, some pale or pastel, but always with a top or bottom note of vibrancy or depth to offset the predominating mood. The flowering groups were combined together to lengthen the season so that the early varieties were covered for by the late, and short with tall so that the combinations were layered. We also included differing types – doubles, parrots, flamed, fringed and picotee – for that sweetie box feeling of delight in variety.
At home, this has now become the favoured way of keeping up the experiment. Each year we buy thirty or fifty bulbs of up to eight varieties and dedicate a bed in the kitchen garden exclusively to a spring display. We have moved them from bed to bed to avoid Tulip Fire. Tulips are most prone to the fungal infection when repeatedly grown in the same ground, but rotate on a three or five year cycle and you will diminish the chance of infection. In combination with our thirst to try new varieties, it has also been the reason that, at the end of the season, we discard the bulbs and start again with a new batch for November planting. The bulbs, which are cheap enough to buy in quantity wholesale, are planted late at the end of the bulb planting season. They are debagged and thoroughly mixed on a tarpaulin before being spread evenly on the surface of the bed and winkled in with a trowel a finger’s width apart so that they are not touching.
Three forms of Tulipa ‘Gudoshnik’
This year we have also started growing the Broken and Breeder tulips from the Hortus Bulborum Foundation. This range of old varieties – some of which date back to the 17th century – fell out of popularity in the 1920’s because, in the main, they are late flowering, and the quest for colour to break with winter began to favour the earlier flowering varieties. Their lateness has been a delight, as they have come just as we have begun to tire of the resilience of the modern tulips. Because they are choice (and expensive) we bought just three or five of each, combining them in pans and planting an individual specimen of each in 5 inch clay pots, so that they could be brought into the house for close observation.
Inside, they last for a week in a cool room and continue to evolve whilst in residence, their more subtle colouring, feathering and breaks filling out and flushing in the maturing process. They feel precious and not disposable like the Dutch tulips, so we plan to try and keep the bulbs when they are over. I will grow them on to feed the bulbs for six weeks after they have flowered, before drying and storing the bulbs in the shed until the autumn. I am hoping they will come to more than just leaf next year.
A mix of Broken and Breeder tulips from Hortus Bulborum
Tulipa ‘Absalon’
A more subtly marked form of Tulipa ‘Absalon’
Tulipa ‘Prince of Wales’
Tulipa ‘Lord Stanley’
As cut flowers tulips continue to grow, their stems often lengthening as much as a foot or more in a tall-flowered variety such as ‘First Proud’. This has been a new favourite this year, rising up to 90cm; as tall as, but later than, ‘Perestroyka’. A mixed selection of varieties is also good in a bunch and, as they age, the stems arch and lean, sensing each other it seems, so that a vase full will fan out like a firework exploding. The flowers change too, opening and closing with the heat and light and changing colour, sometimes intensifying, sometimes bruising from tone to tone as they fade. The mercurial colour changes are the most interesting and offer far more in terms of value than those that change less, and a new personal favourite this year has been ‘Gudoshnik’, the flowers of which you would swear were different varieties; some are pure vermilion, others red with yellow feathering, others yellow with red streaks. We have also enjoyed the raspberry ripple breaks and freckling of ‘Sorbet’.
If you are experimenting as we are the mixes can be hit or miss, and this year’s wasn’t one of the best, because we didn’t warm to a couple of varieties that have thrown the colour off. We won’t be growing ‘Zurel’ again. The flowers are boxy, the petals stiff and waxy and the flaming is rather coarse. ‘Slawa’ was worth a try, because it looked interesting when we ordered from the catalogue, but it felt too graphic in the mix. The colour combination of peach and plum needs careful placing, and the flowers are less graceful than some. Harsh criticism, perhaps, but a good combination is easily let down by an element that isn’t quite right.
Tulipa ‘Insulinde’
Tulipa ‘Marie-Louise’
Tulipa ‘Beauty of Bath’
Tulipa ‘Panorama’
Tulipa ‘Royal Sovereign’
The less successful varieties were also shown in a new light by the older varieties. The breaks, feathering and flaming of the Broken tulips, and the rich tones and pastel gradations of the Breeder tulips are altogether more sophisticated. Put side by side the latter are certainly a rather superior race. Not without their problems I’m guessing, because they are less robust in appearance when compared to the modern hybrids. Particular favourites have been ‘Insulinde’, streaked the colours of blackcurrant fool, ‘Marie Louise’, a Breeder of a delicate, graduated lavender pink, ‘Panorama’, a Breeder of a strong copper orange and ‘Absalon’, a Broken tulip (and one of the original Rembrandt tulips) which has ranged from the flamed, blood-red and yellow you see in illustrations to a more subtle mix of mahogany streaked with tan, like an old-fashioned humbug.
Though we have heard much about their growing popularity, seeing them in the flesh has been a little like discovering really good chocolate. I fear we have now been spoiled and it won’t be possible to be without them.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 13 May 2017
I try hard to ensure that these posies picked from the garden are done in real time, but last weekend I flew off to the States for a week’s work. So this bunch I picked last Saturday before the frost, which till then had kept itself to the hollows down by the stream, made its way up into the garden for the first time on Sunday morning. These are the very last of the dahlias, pushing against the tide of decay, but dwindling daily with the increasing cold at night. Blackened the instant the frost arrives and heralding the coming of winter.
Usually this is the time to lift dahlias. The tender foliage is seared back to the stem. Dig down and the fleshy tubers are rude with a summer’s feeding and full of the energy they need to sustain them through the winter. The two species I have selected here have so far proven themselves to be just as happy in the ground with a little help in the form of a mulch of compost to keep them through the cold season.
Dahlia australis
Despite the elegance of its finely divided leaves and sharply drawn flowers, Dahlia australis is a plant that needs room at the root in company. Try to lift the tuber and you find that it is easily a two-man job and this is why the push of growth is strong and constant from the moment it comes through in the spring.
Standing now at shoulder height and a stretch of the arms across this is not, however, a plant that feels demanding of space. With delicate growth and single flowers on wiry stems, there is a lightness about it that tends to be lost in the hybrids. For this reason I have decided to keep it in the garden as it will sit well with the wild feel of its companions. I plan to have it amongst Verbena macdougalii ‘Lavender Spires’, which you can see here at the very end of its flowering season. The tiny violet flowers, which leave behind them a sterile taper, have been flowering for months, but now have nowhere left to go. Three or four plants spread widely in a bed provide a vertical accent and the dahlia will be good pushing its way through this floral cage.
Dahlia merckii ‘Alba’, Verbena macdougalii ‘Lavender Spires’ and Amsonia hubrichtii
Dahlia merckii ‘Alba’ is of an altogether lighter weight and more delicate disposition. Standing at no more than chest height, with delicate growth and foliage, this is a delectable dahlia. Despite its appearance, it seems to be perfectly hardy, and I would not want to be without it for its constancy of flower. These are pure white, small and widely-spaced and dance like butterflies in wind, but if the plant is not in good company it will snap and break. Teaming it with low perennials that will not overwhelm its foliage is better than staking. Far less fiddly and better for the dahlia to find its own way, since the spaciousness in the plant comes out in several directions from the crown. In the stock beds I have it with a herbaceous Salvia pratensis, but when I use it in the new garden I will team it with the Amsonia hubrichtii that you see colouring gold in this posy. They are both sun loving and, after its early flower, the amsonia will leave room for the dahlia to get away in the first half of the growing season.
The flowers of both these dahlia species die well by simply dropping their petals and, as they seem happy to continue to produce without throwing all their energy into seed, there is no need to dead head as you might their more flamboyant relatives. The singles also have the added benefit of being accessible to pollinating insects.
Bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’)
Miscanthus ‘Dronning Ingrid’ and Bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’)
I have included the bronze fennel in the bunch for its darkness now that it is in seed and the miscanthus for its ability to harness the light in its inflorescence. I am finding the miscanthus difficult to place in the garden because they have such a strong atmosphere which smacks too much of somewhere else to sit easily in this landscape. I have seen them growing wild in Japan, where their plumage is the emblem of the autumn season and their clumps illuminate autumnal verges. Miscanthus sinensis ‘Dronning Ingrid’ is a new variety to me with foliage that colours with flashes of red and orange at the end of the season. The flowers, which are not as dark as some but emerge with a red flush nonetheless, soon pale to silvery bronze. The flower, held free to catch the breeze, is more tapering than many miscanthus but, come the winter, it lives up to its common name of Silver Grass as it flares in the low light.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
This is the third year of my aster trial and a good point to judge how they have performed. The collection, which I set up to broaden my palette, has scratched the very tip of an iceberg, which must run to hundreds of varieties. I currently have just twenty-six and I am at the point now of wanting to reduce them to a dozen or so. Some I have grown before, but the greater number have been selected from plant fairs and on trips to see the well-known collections at Waterperry Gardens and the Picton Garden.
Asters are some of the best late-flowering perennials, the first flowers to hint at the next season in late August, and some of the very last to see the autumn out, their flowers hanging in suspension as the colour drains from everything around them. Aster borders were once celebrated in Victorian and Edwardian gardens, but they became unpopular for a period and with good reason. Many of the older varieties were prone to mildew and those that run could take a border over in the same time that I have been running my trial. I suspect this is one of the reasons that you see them naturalised along railway embankments, where they were thrown over garden fences in frustration, and where the strongest can compete with the buddleia and brambles.
Frustratingly, asters have recently been renamed; A. novae-angliae, A. novi-belgii, A. laevis, A. dumosus, A. lateriflorus, A. cordifolius and A. ericoides have become Symphyotrichum, while A. divaricatus and A. schreberi are now Eurybia. Whatever you call them, aster enthusiasts and nurserymen who are selecting and naming new varieties have honed them for their mildew resistance. This means that in the summer wait for their moment of glory, they help provide a sense of healthy expectation in the borders. They have also been selected for their clump-forming ability and the majority stay put until they need division. Depending upon the variety, this can be in four to six years. They show you when they need this by developing a monkish bald patch in the middle. Division of the strongest growth to the outer edges in the spring renews their vigour. 
The aster trial with from left to right, A. ‘Vasterival’, A. ‘Calliope’, A. ‘Violetta’ and A. ‘Primrose Path’
As I write, the sun is streaming down the valley at an ever-decreasing angle, having burned its way through a morning mist. We had the first frost in the hollows today, so I would say this was perfect weather for looking at my collection. In the penultimate week of October they are in their prime and they look their best in the softened light with the garden waning around them. I have spent the morning amongst them, taking notes and pushing my way through the shoulder high flower to trace them from top to bottom. I want to see if they have stayed put in a clump, and which ones can do without staking, as I’m aiming for there to be as little of that here as possible.
I am smarting, however, as I have committed the ultimate sin when running a trial, for six of the labels are missing, buried within the basal foliage (I’m hoping) or – less helpfully – snapped off when weeding. Of these six I am going to keep two that have shown themselves to be special and, through a process of elimination from studying photographs and my garden diary, I will find out what they are. The others will be found a metaphorical railway embankment. In this case a rough patch of ground where the sheep won’t get them, but where they can provide some late nectar for the bees.
I have just a small number of creeping varieties which I tolerate for their informality. Although most asters prefer to be out in the open with plenty of light, the first three here are happy to live under the skirts of shrubs or in dappled shade. Aster divaricatus, a plant that Gertrude Jekyll famously used to cover for the naked patch the colchicum foliage leaves behind in summer, is one of my favourites. I have seen it in North American woodland where it lives happily amongst tree roots and spangles the dappled forest floor in autumn. Although it will not dominate here, as it does in the States, and runs slowly, it does move about, the dark, wiry stems leaning and sprawling and pushing pale, widely-spaced flowers to a foot or so from the crown. Aster schreberi is similar to look at, with single starry flowers, though it is stronger and has taken off in my hearty soil. I will put it amongst hellebores, which should be man enough to fight it out in the shade under the hamamelis. I will let you know who wins in a couple of years.
Aster ‘Primrose Path’
Strictly speaking, I should be wary of Aster ‘Primrose Path’ for not only does it double itself in size every year, it also seeds. However, it is not a hefty plant, growing to just 75cm and, as it is also happy in a little shade, I am keen to keep it and use its ability to move around in the shadier parts of my gravel plantings around the barns. The flowers, which are small, but not the smallest, are a delicate lilac, each with a lemon-yellow centre.
Aster ‘Violetta’
Aster ‘Little Carlow’
Aster ‘Coombe Fishacre’
Most of the asters for the new garden have been selected for lightness of growth and flower, as I want the plantings to be transparent, allowing views of the far landscape into the garden. All, with the exception of the semi-double ‘Violetta’, are single. I like to see the centre of the flowers and I want them to to dance or to sit like a constellation in space rather than blaze in a solid mass like ‘Little Carlow’. Growing to well over a metre for me here, this is a really good plant, needing little staking and being thoroughly reliable, but it is too floriferous for me, the flowers bunched tight with little space between them so that the weight of flower seems impenetrable. ‘Coombe Fishacre’, though also densely flowered, is certainly a keeper, the centres of the soft pink flowers age to a darker grey-pink to throw a dusky cast over the whole plant. It is good for being shrubby in appearance and self-supporting.
Aster turbinellus hybrid
My absolute favourite Aster turbinellus (the Prairie Aster), is one of the latest to flower, its season running from October into November if the weather holds out. It is exquisite for the air in the plant, the foliage being reduced to narrow blades and the stems wiry and widely-spaced so that it captures the wind and moves well. I’ve used it in great open sweeps in the Millennium Forest planting as the finale to the season there. The flowers, which are a bright lilac and finely rayed, have a gold button eye. I have a form simply named Aster turbinellus hybrid that has darker stems and dark buds that may be proving to be almost better than the straight species. I will keep them both for now and they may well be lovely planted together for the feeling that they are related yet different.
Aster ericoides ‘Pink Cloud’
Aster ericoides ‘Pink Cloud’ also has a reduced leaf, although it is altogether more dense and arching in growth. It is proving a valuable contrast for the size of the flowers, which are tiny and held thousand upon thousand in arching sprays. Palest pink, this should almost be too pretty, but I have enjoyed the scale shift when it appears with the larger-flowered forms. Together they layer and billow like clouds and I’d like to see them take the garden in a storm of their own making. Come the spring, it is all too easy to forget about including these late season performers in a planting. The notes I am taking now will remind me of their importance at this time of year and will be a useful reminder when I make the divisions for inclusion in the new plantings.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
A new month today and there is a chill in the air and the grass is heavy with dew. The trees are yet to show colour, but the autumn bulbs are up and pushing a flare of brilliance against the drawing back that is happening around them.
Today’s posy, the first of October, captures some of this late vibrancy. I have known and grown Nerine bowdenii since I was a teenager. Geraldine, our neighbour, had them growing in the root zone of a huge fig at the foot of a south-facing wall. The fig had long outgrown any ambitions to be trained, but its lofty frame allowed you to walk underneath it and the sun to slide in and bake the ground at its feet. A good baking is what Nerine like as it makes them feel like they are not so far from their origins in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa. They grow there in rocky ground and, though they are capable of surviving a -15°c chill, a free-draining soil and reflected heat will help them to flower better here in Britain.
Nerine bowdenii
I have a collection of plants gathered from here and there as I have come across good forms. The best – the pure white ‘Blanca Perla’ and palest shell pink ‘Ostara’ – are kept in pots and brought up to the side door to keep us company when they are in flower. A mixed batch, which I bought unnamed and which range from white through to a hot sugary bubble-gum pink, are planted at the base of my espaliered pears in the Kitchen Garden. They get the benefit of a south-facing position, the radiated heat from the wall and, importantly, an absence of competition. Their foliage, which needs all the light it can get, hates to be overshadowed by neighbours so keep them to the front of a sunny bed if you want to grow them in company.
Nerine bowdenii ‘Blanca Perla’
A row of Geraldine’s bulbs, which I have moved about with me from garden to garden over the years, are shortly to be transplanted to their new position from the stock beds. The best time to move them is immediately after they have finished flowering as their foliage is becoming dormant then. I will move entire clumps and not divide them, as they flower best when in a tight community. Established clumps will tell you how they like to live, for the bulbs will mound up out of the ground to sunbathe rather than dwell below the surface as most bulbs do. I will plant the clumps on a hot, south-facing slope where the sun slides in under a limbed-up holly. Though there is the necessary light for baking the conditions are tougher there and the bulbs will put more energy into flower than leaf.
Nerine bowdenii ‘Ostara’
The flowers rise up as the summer foliage is waning and sap the last of its strength in the process. Tall stems – sometimes as much as a couple of feet – stand alone by the time the flower sheaths split in response to the flowers’ swelling. They are in flower for weeks, from early in September in some years, running on well into November if the weather is kind. As cut flowers they can last a good fortnight in a vase.
Schizostylis also hail from South Africa. In contrast to Nerine their foliage is almost evergreen, but they also hate competition and will fail to flower if overshadowed. However, here the parallel ends. They prefer damp ground or certainly moisture-retentive soil, so the posy makes a combination that is good for colour contrast, but not really achievable in the garden. That said, I have them here on the south-facing slopes and the plants have not complained in our hearty loam. They were given to me as spring divisions by Josie and Rachel, our neighbours up the lane. They run through their garden in drifts, appearing with asters and colchicum. So far, in the four years I have grown them in one place they have not needed dividing, but everything points to the plants needing it soon and they let you know when with shy flowering.
Schizostylis coccinea ‘Major’
Schizostylis coccinea ‘Major’ is probably the best and most commonly available form. The satiny flowers are a gleaming brilliant red. In the past I have experimented with ‘Sunrise’, a soft apricot-pink, and have ‘Mrs. Hegarty’ – a pale shell pink – from the same neighbours, but both seem to be shy-flowering in comparison. I may simply have not found them a home that suits yet. My rule is that you have to move a plant at least three times to give it a chance of finding its niche, so I’m holding on final judgement for the moment.
Salvia ‘Jezebel’
The Salvia ‘Jezebel’ is part of a salvia trial I’m running to find the good forms of Salvia greggii and it’s closely related cousins. The plants were selected from Dyson’s Nurseries three years ago now at the Dixter Plant Fair (running this weekend) and the best have proved themselves already. Bushy by nature and happy to live in your hottest, driest position, I have found they are excellent in pots or for prolonging the flowering period of a woody herb or mediterranean combination. ‘Jezebel’ has outgrown her neighbours, rising up to 90cm over the summer and flowering continuously since July. If you brush against them the sticky foliage and bronze calyces smell of blackcurrants and spice. The flowers age from a vivid cherry-red to a slightly softer pink before they fall. The bees love it and I know already that it’s a keeper.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
The late summer perennials are upon us. The components of this bunch have all been out for a fortnight and have steadied the garden through the latter part of August, a difficult month that can all too easily see gaps opening up where earlier performers are spent.
Gentiana asclepiadea with Aster umbellatus
Gentiana asclepiadea is the best-known to me. In fact this original plant is one that I have moved about with me since my Home Farm days, where I first used it. It is always listed as autumn-flowering, which is somewhat misleading, but I know when I start to see its colour that summer is ebbing.
Gentians are usually picky plants. We treated them casually when I worked on the Rock Garden as a student at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, but once back down south I soon learned that the majority prefer a cool, moist atmosphere with a humus-rich, acidic soil. Not so this lovely perennial. Grow it in retentive ground on the north side of something taller to give it a little shade in the hottest part of the day and it is remarkably adaptable.
It is a beautiful thing from the moment it emerges in spring, the leaves folded and shiny, like armour. The growth rises to no more than a couple of feet before arching under the weight of bud and revealing why it’s common name is Willow Gentian. The arching habit is what makes it such a delightful companion, for it covers the ground gently without overwhelming smaller partners. Since Home Farm this plant has travelled with me for twenty years and was moved a third time this spring to make way for the new landscaping. I was surprised to find it had grown into a clump that was difficult to manhandle alone. I will divide it in April and put it amongst hellebores on the cool side of the little barn. Here it is teamed with the lofty Aster umbellatus, but in the garden the smaller growing Aster schreberi will add the lightness it benefits from.
Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘All Time High’ and Artemisia lactiflora ‘Elfenbein’
I grew the Aster umbellatus from seed Piet Oudolf gave me when I visited his garden late one autumn. It was out of flower, but stood proud and plateau-flat at two metres. This is its habit and why in America it is called the Flat-Top Aster. In the five years I’ve been getting to know it, it has never run from its clump or toppled or needed support. It is the first of the asters to flower here and I plan to use it with Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘All Time High’, a Japanese burnet which has emerged as a good one in my sanguisorba trial. Its leaves are finely divided and help to keep the overall impression light and lacy. The flowers, dangling and scored like graffiti in bud, produce fine white filaments as they mature, like those of plantain flowers. They will hover around the aster’s tabletop.
I must admit to having given up on Artemisia lactiflora ‘Guizhou’. I liked the idea of its creamy verge-side appearance and the dark, finely-cut foliage, but it always got burnt and has never done well for me. So, it was a surprise to be given this form – Artemisia lactiflora ‘Elfenbein’ – by Chris & Toby Marchant at Orchard Dene Nurseries. Dark green foliage, finely divided again, is the foil to the creamy flowers. It is has been well-behaved to date, happy on our retentive ground and nicely clump-forming. As I look out of the window now, it is filled with afternoon light, caught in its inflorescence and allowing your eye to travel from one cream grouping to another.
Salvia greggii ‘Blue Note’ and Aster umbellatus
Salvia greggii ‘Blue Note’ is not a plant I will combine with any of the above as it likes a hot, dry spot and is low-growing, but it does illustrate the importance of contrast and I like its inky darkness with the off-whites here. It is a great little plant, layering gently where it touches down and smelling muskily of blackcurrants when you brush the foliage. I see it combined with lavenders and have made a note to myself as a reminder to make the coupling next year.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
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