My Garden

Grow-your-own gardeners are becoming more and more interested in unusual fruits - and shoppers, too, are increasingly looking out for something different. So what about a honeysuckle with edible fruits?!

The Honeyberry produces fruits which look rather like large bullet-shaped blueberries with that same colour and that same dusty bloom. Click on the picture to see them more closely. They taste rather like blueberries too and they can be eaten straight from the bush, made into jam or ice cream and they also freeze well. They are also said to make good juice.

Botanically speaking the Honeyberry is Lonicera caerulea var. kamtschatica and it originates in the Kamtschatka Peninsula in north east Siberia which is exceptionally cold - so it's certainly very hardy. The little bushes only reach about 90cm in height, are rarely troubled by disease and, once established, are drought resistant. The flowers are small and not especially showy, but the berries ripen earlier than most fruits and the seeds are so tiny you don't notice them. Just one thing to keep in mind: you need two plants to pollinate each other. Sounds well worth trying.

Honeyberry is available now from DT Brown.

Also new from DT Brown, amongst more traditional fruits, is a new raspberry called ‘Cascade Delight'. Reckoned to be an improvement on ‘Tumaleen', which is the star of the current Wisley trial of raspberries, the fruit is said to be 20% larger and firmer too. It's also said to grow much better than other raspberries in wet conditions. It's so new that it wasn't available when the Wisley trial was first planted; plants were added to the trial last year but it has not yet begun cropping. Raspberry ‘Cascade Delight' is available now from DT Brown.

 

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Judging the verbascum trial at Wisley recently, a splendid new introduction caught my eye.

Many of the plants in the trial had died during the winter – sadly, many are not as hardy as we’re led to believe and this trial has proved the point  – but a new variety from the garden at Great Dixter was outstanding, both in its hardiness and its impact. And unlike some, the arching green basal foliage was in excellent condition and tall upright spikes of bright but cool yellow were well packed with flowers.

Called ‘Christo’s Yellow Lightning’, it was found in Eastern Turkey when Christo (the late Christopher Lloyd) was on a trip with Dixter head gardener Fergus Garret and tulip expert Anna Pavord. They came across a man leading an elderly donkey as it laboured feebly along a rocky path loaded down with a towering load of verbascum stems. Christo asked Fergus (who speaks Turkish) to ask the man the name of the donkey – and it turned out the donkey was named Lightning.  So it was natural that the verbascum that came from the trip was called ‘Christo’s Yellow Lightning’. And it looks as if it’s on the way to an Award of Garden Merit.

Verbascum ‘Christo’s Yellow Lightning’ is too new to be in the latest RHS Plant Finder but it’s available from the nursery at Great Dixter.
 

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Shasta daisies, Leucanthemum x superbum, have never been the most fashionable of plants but they're tough, dependable and those masses of brilliant white daisies make real impact. They're good for cutting, too.

In recent years the trend has been to reduce their height, ‘Snow Lady' can flower at just 25cm, but this year's newcomer is rather different. The plant reaches about 45cm, the flowers are large - and they're yellow. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

I know, there've been yellow shasta daisies before but in Broadway Lights (‘Leumayel') the flowers open a really bright yellow then become creamier as they age and eventually white. The flowers last well and so for much of their long season the plant carries a pleasing harmony of all three shades. What's more, ‘Broadway Lights' develops quickly so it produces plenty of flower in its first season in the garden. It looks well worth trying.

Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Broadway Lights' is available from these the RHS Plant Centre at Wisley, Gardening Express and Avondale Nursery.
 

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I have a piece in the Daily Telegraph newspaper today on recent developments in border phlox (Phlox paniculata). You can read it here.

I know this blog is about new plants but you might also be interested to know that my profile of the most influential writer on vegetables of our times - Joy Larkcom - is also  available online. You can read it here

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Coleus are enjoying a dramatic resurgence. Favourites in Victorian times both for indoor use and as summer bedders, as interest in formal bedding declined and fewer people kept heated greenhouses… well, interest waned. Even when container growing became so popular it took a while for gardeners to realise what spectacular container plants they are.

In this year’s RHS Plant Finder there are forty five new coleus (although some are re-introductions) and most of these newcomers are listed by Horn’s Garden Centre who, unfortunately do sell not by mail order. However, in garden centres this summer expect to find some splendid new varieties.

The Kong Series is well named. These are big powerful plants with large leaves making a dramatic impact. ‘Kong Green’ (click on the image above) is new this year, its bold green leaf blazed with a creamy white flash. 

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Last summer, while losing my mobile phone in the luxuriant dahlia trial (and finding it again the next day) I realised that some visitors, overwhelmed by the flamboyant exhibition types, may have missed some of the best new dahlias of recent years.

The Happy Series. which includes the dramatic Happy Single Juliet ('HS Juliet'), is not intended for exhibitors but is great in the garden. Ideal for large containers, for mixed borders and for brilliant summer seasonal displays, each of the eight single-flowered varieties produces a prolific display of often bicoloured flowers set against foliage in tomes reminiscent of ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ leaves.

Reaching 50-75cm high and with flowers 10-12cm across, the proportions are just right and the plants are more versatile than most other dark-leaded dahlias. True, there are some short, seed-raised types with dark leaves but they usually come only in mixtures and the flower colours can be a rather murky.

Raised by Aad Verwer in The Netherlands, Aad is also the creator of the dwarf double Gallery Series of dahlias, the tall Karma Series, bred specially for cutting, and many other fine dahlias.

New this year are Happy Single Romeo (‘HS Romeo’), in rich red, and Happy Single Wink (‘HS Wink’), in lilac with a red ring round the eye. Next year look out for Happy Single Princess (‘HS Princess’) with pure white flowers set against dark foliage – that will be worth waiting for.

The RHS Plant Finder mail order nursery stocking the widest range of this series, including the two newest, is Southon Plants but look out for them in garden centres around the country
 

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I've written an artice about the RHS trials for tomorrow's Daily Telegraph (7June). It's available to read online now. Click on the image on the left for a taste of it, click here to read it on the Daily Telegraph website.

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Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about ‘Jethro Tull’, the tough new perennial coreopsis with fluted petals, come news of an astonishing array of new coreopsis which are on the way from across the Atlantic.

Click on the picture to see a much enlarged exclusive image of twenty five new coreopsis varieties which are expected to be introduced here over the next few years.

Included in this picture are the Big Bang Series. Unlike ‘Limerock Ruby’ and many other recent coreopsis in unusual colours, varieties in the Big Bang Series are tough as nails and excellent hardy perennials even in climates far colder than ours – they’re hardy down to -20C. They were bred by Darrell Probst, well known as a pioneer breeder of epimediums, in Massachusetts where it’s far far colder than here.

Their background is complicated. The plants in this series are hybrids involving eight different species and have been eight years in the making. They produce a long succession of flowers, on relatively tall plants, around 30in/75cm, with foliage between that of C. verticillata and C. grandiflora in shape.

The first in the series, ‘Full Moon’ (pale yellow), should be on sale here in Britain before too long. If any nurseries are planning to sell them, or anyone spots them on sale, please post a comment below. For the next, ‘Redshift’ (cream with a red ring round the eye), we'll have to wait till next year.

For more on these, and other new coreopsis, take a look at my Transatlantic Plantsman blog. 

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In the last couple of years, a number of perennial coreopsis with fluted petals have arrived at nurseries. The fluted petals are formed when individual rays of the daisy-like flowers roll inwards at the edges and join to form a tube. This feature is also seen in a number of other members of the daisy family from the annual Cosmos ‘Sea Shells’ to the perennial Gaillardia ‘Fanfare’.

The first of the coreopsis with fluted petals was C. auriculata ‘Zamfir’ (although the Plant Finder spells the name 'Zamphir'), introduced in the USA in 1991 and here in 2005. This sport of C. auriculata has bright yellow flowers, but I found that while some flowers had fluted petals some did not. The result was annoyingly unpredictable – and rather messy. ‘Zamfir’ was raised by ItSaul Plants in Georgia, the same nursery that has brought us, more recently, a number of new hybrid echinaceas in new colours. ‘Zamfir’ is available from these RHS Plant Finder nurseries.

‘Pinwheel’ is a paler form, bred in Oregon, and introduced here last year. The petals are usually only fluted to about half the length, so revealing an appealing contrast between the paler inside of the flute and the slightly darker outside. However, I’ve not found this overwinters as reliably as some other coreopsis although it makes a fine summer container plant. ‘Pinwheel’ is available from these RHS Plant Finder nurseries

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Sweet peas are always a special feature at Chelsea, and both sweet pea exhibitors were awarded Gold Medals this year. But somehow, in the hurly-burly of the show, my news of their four new sweet pea introductions never made it on to the new plants pages on the RHS Chelsea website. So let me just run through them for you here.

Eagle Sweet Peas had three new launches at Chelsea this year. The aptly named ‘Maestro is a beautiful lavender with a strong perfume and is the last of his new varieties donated to the National Sweet Pea Society by the pioneering sweet pea breeder, the late great Bernard Jones. Grown on and prepared for release by two eminent breeders, Andy Beane and Alec Cave, it is now being released by Eagle Sweet Peas who will donate 50% of the revenue  packet sales back to the N.S.P.S.

They also had two other newcomers on display. ‘Fields of Fire’, raised by John Robson of Castle Douglas, is the first variety to combine scarlet flowers with a strong perfume and so is bound to be popular. ‘Henry Thomas’ is an outstanding exhibition variety raised by Derek Heathcote at Eagle Sweet Peas themselves with large, rich crimson flowers on long stout stems. It’s named for his grandson.

Every Chelsea, Matthewman's Sweet Peas seem to find an exciting new sweet pea to introduce, this year it’s ‘George Priestley’. Fragrance and showbench quality are its outstanding features. Beautifully ruffled creamy white flowers are strongly flushed in mauve, with superb placement of the flowers on the stems. ‘George Priestly’ won an Award of Merit for exhibition at the 2004 RHS trials at Wisley. And its scent is exceptional.

This was one of the varieties that the well-respected former Vice Chairman of the National Sweet Pea Society was working on when he passed away and was chosen to bear his name.

 

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This is my master list of the 94 plants (after the recent update) seen for the first time at Chelsea this year. This list is based on taking nurseries' word for it! So if they say it's new, then it's on this list. As I've already discusssed, some are not so very new at all! I've excluded a few, like the rare tree ferns on the Desert to Jungle exhibit, which are not expected to be on sale anytime soon. If you came across any more new plants at Chelsea, please let me know by posting a comment below. Thanks. (Sorry about the lack of italics for generic names - it takes so long to put them in!)

The RHS Chelsea website has (the final few are yet to appear) and I also did a piece on new Chelsea plants for the Daily Telegraph. 

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Derek Jarman at Hayloft Plants just emailed to tell me about the newcomers in their latest catalogue. Salvia greggii ‘Icing Sugar’ looks one of the best.

Recalling the bicoloured flowers of Salvia x jamensis ‘Hot Lips’, the two-tone purple flowers of ‘Icing Sugar’ are carried on bushy, twiggy plants up to 90cm high from now through to September. Click on the picture to see the plant in more detail. However, unlike those of ‘Hot Lips’, the two-tone colouring is stable whatever the weather or the time of year. Easy in full sun and best in well-drained soil, once established ‘Icing Sugar’ will tolerate drought.

Salvia greggii ‘Icing Sugar’ is available from Hayloft Plants. It is also available from these RHS Plant Finder nurseries, from some independent garden centres, and from garden centres in these groups: Capital Gardens, Dobbies, Frosts, Blue Diamond, Haskins, Klondyke, Strikes, Stewarts and The Garden Stores.

The Cocktail Series of border phlox also looks interesting. Bred in Holland by Jan Verschoor, Jan is already well-known for his previous phlox including the bicoloured ‘Peppermint Twist’. The three in the Cocktail Series, with small gardens in mind, reach only about 50cm so can even be grown in containers.

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I've been writing up some of the plants that are new at Chelsea this year for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show website; you can check them out here. One that especially impressed me was a new lily called 'Kushi Maya' which is an exclusive to H. W. Hyde and Son (though it's not yet on their website). OK, there are plenty of new lilies every year so what's so special about this one?

Well, firstly, it's a hybrid between Lilium nepalense and an Oriental Hybrid lily, types which are so distantly related to each other that they don't usually hybridise at all.

Secondly, just take a look - click on the picture to enlarge it and you'll see. The huge flowers are white at the edges of each petal, shading to hazy green and with a darker green streak through the centre of each. Then the centre is bloodied in deep crimson and the anthers are chocolate brown. Isn't it gorgeous? And on top of all that it has a wonderful fragrance.

So how did this hybrid come about? Richard Hyde, the current Hyde who's running the company which was established in 1926, told me: "'Kushi Maya' is the result of cutting edge embryo recovery techniques. Firstly, a flower of L. nepalense was pollinated with pollen from an Oriental Hybrid flower, a specially selected, but unnamed, seedling. Quite straightforward this, but what happened next is the clever bit.

"After about 40 days, long before it was fully ripe, the seed pod was harvested and taken to a laboratory. Here, two tiny embryos were removed from the endosperm and placed in sterile test tubes filled with a special growing medium where they grew into young plants. Without being recovered like this they would have aborted, due to the huge genetic differences between the two parents. Even using this technique, very wide hybrids like 'Kushi Maya' are both very difficult and hugely expensive to obtain."

My question, of course, is this: if one embryo grew to be the lovely 'Kushi Maya' - what happened to the other one?!

Anyway, it's a lovely plant. But what about that name? "Kushi Maya," Richard told me, "is a name given to female Nepalese children, it's English translation is Happy Love." Gardeners, says your reporter cornily, will be happy to love this new lily.

The RHS Chelsea website has my write-ups of this year's Chelsea newcomers.

Start here for full RHS coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show.

 

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As well as over eighty new plants at Chelsea, this year sees the arrival of a couple of old timers - one over a hundred years old.

Cayeux Iris from France will have four impressive new introductions at the Show but also on display will be Iris ‘Ma Mie', originally introduced in 1906. Click on the picture to see how lovely it is.

The four newcomers were raised by Richard Cayeux, ‘Ma Mie' was bred by his great-grandfather, Ferdinand Cayeux who founded the company. ‘Ma Mie' is a vigorous prolific Plicata type, white with pretty purple-blue stitching on the falls and slightly richer edging in the standards. The flower is endearingly old fashioned in its shape and still well worth growing after all these years.

Iris ‘Ma Mie' is available from Cayeux's British agent, Viv Marsh Postal Plants.

The origins of Dianthus ‘Bailey's Celebration' are much more recent. In the 1990s this prettily patterned pink was found by Stef Bailey, himself a well known Chelsea exhibitor, as a sport on ‘Anniversary' which was raised by his father Stephen Bailey. More recently, Whetman Pinks listed it but had to withdraw it from sale by as it had a tendency to revert to white, losing its attractive raspberry markings. However, at its best this is not only an attractive flower but it also has a lovely perfume and the plants have persistent grey-green foliage and good garden performance.

So Whetman Pinks set about fixing the problem and they finally selected from amongst their stocks a form that did not revert and retains its attractive colouring. This is the plant that will be re-launched at Chelsea this week.

Dianthus ‘Bailey's Celebration' is available from Whetman Pinks

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In the last few years echinaceas have come a long way - in terms of new colours at least. So far these have all been raised in America and Antonia Fiander at Future Primitive Plants in Worcestershire has just emailed to say that she now has stock of the latest to hit these shores - ‘Tiki Torch'. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Bred by Terra Nova Nurseries in Oregon, who've raised hundreds of good perennials in recent years, ‘Tiki Torch' is derived in part from the very robust E. purpurea ‘Ruby Giant' and also from the yellow-flowered E. paradoxa. The flowers are a vivid pumpkin orange, slightly darker at the base of each petal, with bright red cones and a strong scent. I've not grown it yet, but it looks to be the most vivid orange echinacea so far.

As well as being available from Future Primitive Plants, ‘Tiki Torch' is listed by these Plant Finder nurseries and Thompson and Morgan Young Plants.

My article on these new hybrid echinaceas in The Plantsman magazine is available here

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