My Garden

One of the most striking new plants I came across at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show earlier this month was a new linaria. I’d spotted it on the Twelfth Night garden, tucked up against a pink bee hive, and wondered what it was, it didn’t look familiar and there was no label. Then in the floral marquee, Rosy Hardy of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants showed it to me.

It proved to be an unusually dwarf form of Linaria purpurea, reaching only about 18in/45cm in height. Rosy had spotted it in the gravel on their Hampshire nursery, and it caught her eye not only because it was a lot shorter than the usual form – less than half the height – but was also unusually bushy with side shoots appearing all the way up the stem. It also seemed to be sterile (one reason it was so prolific), with none of the infuriating seedlings that the usual form produces and which you then have to weed out. Its colour also seemed a little softer, perhaps a little more blue.

On her exhibit, Rosy had it labelled simply Linaria purpurea “Dwarf” – not such a catchy name, really, so I urged her to choose something better. Later, she told me they’d decided to call it ‘Mini-Me’. I wrote it up in my New Plants selection in the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show coverage and included it in my video covering much of the same ground.

But that wasn’t then end of the story. After the show Rosy sent me an email. It wasn’t possible to call the plant ‘Mini-Me’ as one of the big international plant breeders had registered Mini-Me as a Trade Mark for any horticultural products. They use it for a series of petunias, for example. So Hardy’s came up with a new name – ‘Freefolk Piccolo’ (the Freefolk part of the name comes from the name of the Hampshire hamlet where the nursery is located: Freefolk Priors). So, finally, this breakthrough new linaria is called Linaria purpurea ‘Freefolk Piccolo’.

Such has been the interest that the nursery has now sold out. But check the Hardy's website so see when it’s back in stock.

Read More...

It was back in 1913 that the first Angel Pelargonium was created. It was developed from the scented-leaved Pelargonium crispum and an old Regal Pelargonium called 'The Shah' by Arthur Langley-Smith, a headmaster by profession, as revealed in the fascinating display by Derek Lloyd Dean at the recent Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

In recent years two breeders have continued to take Angel Pelargoniums forward: Mervyn Haird, whose varieties all have the Cottenham Prefix, and who sadly passed away in 2004, and Ken Dymond, whose varieties all have the Quantock prefix.

And it was from one of Ken Dymond’s Quantock varieties that the first ever double-flowered Angel arose. It’s taken almost a hundred years.

Five years ago a double flowered shoot arose on a plant of ‘Quantock Ultimate’ at Fir Trees Pelargonium Nursery. ‘Quantock Ultimate’ is a semi-trailing type with deep maroon blooms edged in white. The name indicates how good it is.

Named ‘Quantock Double Diamond’, the new double form features the same gently trailing habit, the same maroon petals edged in white – but every flower is double. And because its flowers are sterile they just keep on coming. I thought it was one of the stars of the recent Hampton Court Palace Flower Show where it was unveiled. It would make a splendid specimen in a patio container.

Angel pelargonium ‘Quantock Double Diamond’ is available exclusively from Fir Trees Pelargonium Nursery (scroll down). And they’ve clearly worked hard to build up stock because, as I write, it’s still available.

Read More...

Sometimes a plant breeder sets out with an aim in mind - and ends up creating an entirely different plant. That was the case with this dramatic new geum. Plant breeder Tim Crowther tells the story.

“What I was looking for in 1988 was a compact free flowering clone that I could take further and use to create plants in a range of colours. To achieve this I crossed Geum coccineum with G. rivale to reinforce the compactness. Then I crossed the best resulting seedlings with G. chiloensis expecting colour breaks - but most of the resulting offspring were dull with rather a lot of plants having small petals like those of G. rivale.

“However, I selected three of interest but found that two were too similar to existing cultivars. The remaining one, ‘Totally Tangerine’, ended the line as it was sterile and so could not be used as a parent -  not at all what I intended so in a way it could be classed as a failure.

“But ‘Totally Tangerine’ proved to be an excellent plant. Its main attributes are robustness, length of flowering season, number of flowers, sterility, vigour and colour. It was doing its best to flower in late January, in spite of the snow, and will continue flowering until November. In its second year it produced well over two thousand blooms counted from the seed heads.”

So instead if creating a compact and free flowering plant, Tim produced an unusually tall and free flowering plant.

The flowers are a lovely soft tangerine orange, and plants usually start flowering well at about 60cm/2ft in late April or early May. They then continue flowering October or even November by which time the plant may reach an astonishing 1.4m/41/2ft. Growing happily in most soils in a sunny position, the plant I saw in the autumn a couple years back was really impressive.

Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ has been introduced by Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants.

Read More...

Hydrangeas that flower all summer are a relatively new innovation but they are now being grown more widely. The Endless Summer Collection started it all off and there’s a new addition to the series now available.

The trick with these repeat flowering hydrangeas is that they flower on both the old growth from the previous season, which produces the earlier flowers, and also the new growth from the current season – this produces the later flowers.

The first of these was simply called Endless Summer ('Bailmer'). It’s a hortensia (mophead type) and like most hydrangeas it makes a rounded plant 0.9-1.5m/3-5ft high and across. Not only does it flower all summer but the large heads are crowded with flowers and there’s also bronze autumn colour.

Next came ‘Blushing Bride’ with semi-double white flowers blushing as they age. And now we have the latest in the series, Twist-n-Shout (‘Piihm-I’).

Twist-n-Shout is the first lacecap in the Endless Summer series. Its broad lacecap heads are delightful and it has another very attractive feature – the stems are red, a colouring it derives from one of its parents ‘Lady in Red’.

The story of these re-blooming hydrangeas began in 1998. Dr. Michael Dirr, America’s leading woody plant expert, was visiting a nursery in Minnesota when a hydrangea caught his eye. It had been picked out by one of the nursery’s staff but since then had been largely ignored. Dr Dirr took cuttings back to his base at the University of Georgia where the plant proved to be perpetual flowering. That was the original Endless Summer.

As with all these hydrangeas, the flower colour largely depends on the soil – acid soil gives blue flowers, alkaline soil gives pink flowers.

You can order Endless Summer Twist-n-Shout from these RHS Plant Finder nurseries.

Read More...

Four of the most impressive new plants at this year’s Hampton Court Palace Flower Show are the four new clematis raised by Raymond Evison. In my coverage of the plants at the Show I mentioned two of them in my choice of ten new flowering plants and one of those featured in my new plants video interview. But let’s take a look at the other two.

Amethyst Beauty™ (‘Evipo043’) (top, click to enlarge), on the Taylor’s Clematis Nursery stand, is a deep and sultry colour, rich dark purple and then adding dark bluish tones as the flowers mature; in the centre of each flower is a cluster of red anthers. The flowers start to open in June and continue into September.

Reaching just 1.8m/6ft in height, like many of  the clematis from Raymond Evison it’s much more manageable than most traditional varieties. Just cut the whole plant back to 15cm/6in in spring.

Also on the Taylor’s Clematis Nursery exhibit is Reflections™ ('Evipo035') (left, click to enlarge). This has such cool and subtle colouring, it was much admired. The semi-double flowers are lilac blue in colour but fade gently as they age so the result is that when in full flower the plant presents a harmonious blend of shades that is really captivating. Like Amethyst Beauty, Reflections reaches about 1.8m/6ft and can be cut back to 15cm/6in each spring.

Over in my Hampton Court plants coverage you can read about the two other new clematis. Shimmer (‘Evipo028’), with a similar harmonious blend of colouring in slightly bluer shades, also features on the Taylor’s Clematis Nursery exhibit. Rather shorter, at 1.2m/4ft, is Guiding Promise™ (‘Evipo53’), with slim, wavy purple blue petals.

Clematis Guiding Promise™ (‘Evipo53’) will be available soon. The other three clematis are available from Taylor’s Clematis Nursery.

The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show closes on Sunday, tickets are still available.

Read More...

I’ve again been checking up on the new plants released at this year’s Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, which runs till Sunday.

So far there are two batches of choices on the RHS website:

New Roses – with the focus on healthy varieties.
New Flowers – climbers, perennials and annuals

And coming soon is my pick of the new food plants and also a short video featuring some of the most interesting new plants at the Show. Check back here for the links in a day or two.

I've also been looking at some other aspects of the plants at the show, start here for links to them all.

Read More...

The first National Plant Show has just closed at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry. This show is geared towards professional plantspeople but we’re all interested in the New Plant Awards. Time to wrap up the coverage.

I ran through the Gold Medal winners late yesterday and highlighted the Best in Show earlier yesterday. So let’s have a quick recap and then look at the Silver and Bronze awards.

Best in show
Begonia 'Glowing Embers'

Gold Medals
Begonia 'Glowing Embers'
Clematis Guiding Promise™ (‘Evipo053)
Coprosma ‘Tequila Sunrise’
Nemesia ‘Blueberry Ripple’
Nemesia ‘Framboise’

Silver Medals
Gazania ‘Apache’ Large plants and large flowers which are red with yellow petal tips
Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer Twist ‘n’ Shout’ The latest in the repeat flowering series
Hydrangea paniculata ‘Bombshell’ Greenish white flowers on compact plants
Leucanthemum ‘Real Galaxy’ (Right, click to enlarge) Large eyed flowers with a mass of frilly creamy petals
Nemesia ‘Vanilla Lady’, Prolific, white and heavily vanilla scented
Rosa ‘Joie de Vivre’ Rose of the Year, neat, compact, prolific, disease resistant

Bronze Medals
Coprosma ‘Pacific Sunset’, glossy bronze foliage with a red centre
Gerbera Garvinea Series, Very hardy gerberas for the open garden
Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ Very long flowering with soft orange flowers
Nemesia ‘Mirabelle’ (Left, click to enlarge) Slightly smoky blue purple flowers in great numbers
Nemesia ‘Sugar Frosted’ (Top, click to enlarge) Misty pink flowers and very brightly variegated leaves
Salvia eigii ‘Christopher Fairweather’ Vivid pink hooked flowers on vertical stems
Sambucus nigra ‘Black Tower’ very upright with almost black leaves

Book next year's National Plant Show in your diary - 28 and 29 September 2011.

[Cross posted from my Transatlantic Plantsman blog]

 

Read More...

[Cross posted extra from my Transatlantic Plantsman blog.]

So here’s more on the New Plant Awards at the first National Plant Show (last day tomorrow). Sponsored by ProVar, the non-profit agency that markets new plants, yesterday afternoon and evening I helped judge the awards – which were announced this morning. So here’s the full roster of Gold Awards
:
Begonia Glowing Embers, which I told you about this morning;
Clematis Guiding Promise™ (‘Evipo053), the latest from Raymond Evison;
Coprosma ‘Tequila Sunrise’, a dwarf shrub in brilliant colours;
Nemesia 'Blueberry Ripple', an amazingly prolific bicoloured nemesia;
Nemesia ‘Framboise’, also prolific and a wonderful fruity colour.

We gave the Best in Show award to Begonia Glowing Embers, for its combination of sultry chocolate bronze foliage and its many orange single flowers.

Clematis Guiding Promise™ (‘Evipo053')  (top, click to enlarge) is the latest from ace clematis breeder Raymond Evison. It’s short, reaching just 0.9-1.2m/3-4ft, so is ideal sprawling through a low shrub and produces masses of six-petalled blue-purple flowers with dark centres in early summer and then again in late summer and autumn.

Coprosma ‘Tequila Sunrise’ (right, click to enlarge) originated in New Zealand as a sport of Coprosma ‘Yuanne’ and its very glossy,  wavy, evergreen green leaves are edged in rusty orange in summer turning red in winter. This looks to be a fine plant to use as a container specimen.

Nemesia 'Blueberry Ripple' (left, click to enlarge) stood out from across the hall. A mass of scented blueberry and white flowers, the two colours separated by a yellow lip, keep coming on bushy plants all summer.

Nemesia ‘Framboise’ (right, click to enlarge), five nemesias gained awards in all, I liked this one for its rich fruity colouring and the way the foliage stayed even and compact and the flowers all stood up above it.

I’ll tell you about the other award winners tomorrow. These are all new in Britain and just starting to become available in garden centres and soon by mail order. Look out for them.

Finally, without naming names, it was interesting to see that a number of entries simply failed to follow the rules. Following the rules is absolutely basic.
For example:
Five plants of each entry were required, so don’t submit just one.
Don’t turn up two hours after the deadline, when judging is almost complete, and expect your entry to be accepted.
If the main feature of a plant is its flowers, enter plants which are actually flowering!

Read More...

Yesterday afternoon and evening I helped judge the New Plant Awards at the very first British National Plant Show.

We started out with almost sixty entries, and, after much careful deliberation, we gave the award for the Best New Plant in the Show to a new begonia exhibited by Allensmore Nurseries called Glowing Embers (left, click to enlarge). The other judges were: David Clark, formerly Managing Director of Notcutts Nurseries; David Gilchrist of the Horticultural Trades Association; Kate Lowe, editor of the trade magazine Horticulture Week; and Caroline Owen, Managing Director of Scotsdales Garden Centre near Cambridge, one of the country's largest independent garden centres.
Read More...

Next Tuesday sees the opening of the very first National Plant Show. Held at Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry in the English Midlands, on June 29 and 30. Over a hundred nurseries and seed companies will be exhibiting their plants. No patio furniture, no mock-stone containers, no plastic turf, no Christmas holiday gifts, no barbecues, no novelty hand tools, no cure-all pesticides, no cheesy lighting and no plastic anything.

Just plants.

Intended for garden centres, retail nurseries, florists, landscape and garden designers, and other industry professionals of all kinds – the National Plant Show does what so many of us have always wanted a show to do. It forgets everything else and focuses on the plants. Hundreds and hundreds of plants - trees, shrubs, perennials, patio plants - everything, as long as it's a plant.

Plus. There are also seminars from the likes of Raymond Evison (Guernsey Clematis), Andy McInroe (Hillier Nurseries) and Sarah Raven.

I’m honoured to be one of the judges for the New Plant Awards, the winners will be announced on the morning of June 29, and I’m looking forward to seeing the best of what the British plant trade has to offer. Like Heuchera ‘Autumn Leaves’ (above, click to enlarge), a star in the making, perhaps, from America’s Terra Nova Nurseries.

You can sign up as a visitor online here.

Read More...

New roses appear every year and at the forthcoming Hampton Court Palace Flower Show there will be a flood of newcomers. But one of the most interesting of this year’s new introductions was launched at Chelsea and short listed for the Chelsea Plant of the Year Award.

Claire Marshall (‘Harunite’) is a Floribunda (Cluster-flowered) rose, reaching just 2ft/60cm in height, and is a gorgeous colour, a rich plummy shade evoking the classic old roses. Its heavy fragrance, too, is reminiscent of the old roses.

Carried in clusters of seven, the flowers are large with the central flower in each cluster being as much as 4in/10cm across. The flowers keep coming all summer and the combination of colour, fragrance, manageable height and repeat flowering make this an ideal rose for small gardens or even containers. But Claire Marshall (‘Harunite’) has another important feature: disease tolerance.

“As far as health is concerned, we haven't used any fungicides on our new rose testing or trials since 1994/95 season," Philip Harkness told me. “So any new varieties that emerge have to show good tolerance to disease and, should they suffer, also have a constitution that enables them to regrow and recover without the plant suffering. Claire Marshall has good resistance in most situations although under stress or overcrowding she will succumb to some disease.”

The rose is named for the daughter of Jim Marshall, holder of the Plant Heritage National Collection of Malmaison Carnations. It’s the result of a cross pollination made back in 2003, so it has been assessed over quite a few seasons. It includes blood from four different roses: ‘Anne Harkness’, ‘New Dawn’, ‘Miss Dior’ and ‘New Age’.

A donation of 80p from the sale of each rose will be donated to *** Cancer Care.

You can order the rose Claire Marshall (‘Harunite’) from Harkness Roses.

Read More...

Back in March, I wrote here about the impressive new Spotlight hollyhocks that had recently become available - like the ‘Mars Magic’ seen here on the road to its release.

Now, over on my Transatlantic Plantsman blog, I have the full story of the many years of work that went into their creation – starting with seeds sent to the international seed company Jelitto by a customer.

And it’s not just about hollyhocks – the story typifies the years, sometimes decades, of work that goes into creating the new varieties which add new colour and textures to our gardens.

Take a look at the story of the Spotlight hollyhocks.

Read More...

Pansies are probably the most popular of all spring container plants: sparkling colours, tough, and easy to grow. For decades all the varieties were tight and compact; then we had trailing types from seed. Now, we have the final step: trailing pansies grown from cuttings.

We’ve had trailing violas from cuttings, but these British-bred Balconita pansies have much larger flowers, in much brighter colours and instead of hanging down in sheets like the early Surfinia petunias they develop a much more elegant habit. And why from cuttings? Because they’re guaranteed uniform, no off colours and no variation in how – or if – they trail.

Developed by British plant breeder David Kerley, he also created the Tumbelina double petunias and the Belarina double primroses.

“We started to breed the trailing pansies in 2000,” David told me, “but it proved difficult to incorporate the trailing habit… It was four seasons before we saw the first signs that we were on the right track and by then we were perilously close to giving up. In the end I think we grew around 80-90,000 plants to get these first four varieties and the three we have in the pipeline.

“The habit is fairly horizontal initially, then hanging as the stems elongate. They are not the “grow upright and fall over” type, that’s not really trailing at all. The challenge was to produce a compact plant in a pot which looked attractive and was easy to manage in the garden centre but still trailed well after planting.” The picture above (click to enlarge) shows 'Balconita Meridian Blue' with the trailing viola 'Friolina Blue White Cascadiz' and the buy-in-the-garden centre stage.

Those first four in the Balconita Series are ‘Cheeky Yellow’ (top, click to enlarge), ‘Deep Red’ (left, click to enlarge), ‘Meridien Blue’, and ‘White Surprise’ but at the moment they are only available in a mixture.

You can order Trailing Pansy 'Balconita Mixed' from Thompson & Morgan. The plants will flower in the autumn, but the main display will come in spring.

Read More...

What do we want from a new apple variety? Flavour must be first, and good texture as well. Disease resistance is a big help. It must crop heavily… It helps if it stores well… If it’s a good cooker as well as being a good eater straight off the tree, that’s great… And I always like an apple that simply looks tempting.

Redlove® Era®, new from Suttons today (!), has all this and more. It also has long-lasting deep pink flowers and the flesh of the apples is red too! It even keeps its colour when it’s cooked. Think of it, pink apple pie.

This variety is so new that you can’t even buy it in the supermarket or the greengrocer. It was raised in Switzerland by ace apple breeder Markus Kobelt who spent many years developing it. It’s the first of a series of red-fleshed apples, the Redlove® Series.

Starting with parents which were disease-resistant and with sweet firm flesh, he spent many years of careful pollination and selection before choosing this unique variety. After all, think how long it takes an apple to go from a germinating seed to a fruit you can taste. And if you’re a plant breeder you may well have to go through this time and again before you get something really good.

The round, medium-sized fruits of Redlove® Era® have a lovely deep red skin. The firm, crisp and juicy red flesh has a hazy white marbling and its flavour has a good balance of sweetness and acidity with berry overtones. The flowers are unusually long lasting and deep pink in colour and Redlove® Era® is also highly resistant to apple scab – a feature which, which in my garden, is invaluable. It’s ready to eat from the tree around mid September and will store till Christmas.

Redlove® Era® is supplied on an M9 rootstock and will produce an easily managed tree up to about 2.5m (8ft) tall.

It’s red on the outside, red on the inside, the flowers are red and it’s red when it’s cooked! Sounds wonderful, I can’t wait to try it.

Read More...

There’s been quite a flurry of new coreopsis appearing in nurseries and mail order catalogues recently. Some, like the Coloropsis Series and Punch Series, are intended for summer containers and are not hardy. But others like the Big Bang series are tough as anything – as tough as our old friend C. verticillata. And they come in some exciting new colours. Latest on the scene in the Big Bang series is ‘Redshift’.

The Big Bang series was developed over many years by intercrossing a range of species collected in the wild in the southern USA by plantsman and breeder Darrell Probst (better known, up to now, for his work on epimediums). Back in Massachusetts in the north east, where it’s a lot colder than here, he worked on bringing exciting new colours to hardy coreopsis. The plants in the Big Bang Series can take temperatures down to -20C/-5F. Yes, they’re tough. The cool yellow ‘Full Moon’ was the first, ‘Redshift’ is the next.

When they first open in summer the flowers of ‘Redshift’ are creamy yellow with a bold deep red zone around the eye. Then, as autumn approaches and temperatures begin to cool down, the red colouring seeps along the length of the petals until the whole flower is deep red. It’s like having two different varieties growing together. The flowers are about 5cm/2in across (not 4in/10cm as one catalogue states!), and the plants reaches 60-75cm/24-30in in height.

All the varieties in the Big bang Series have cosmological names. First there was ‘Full Moon; ‘Redshift’ (not ‘Red Shift’) is named for the optical effect caused by the expansion of the universe which makes distant objects take on a red colouring. Others on the way include ‘Galaxy’, ‘Cosmic Eye’, ‘Half Moon’, ‘Star Cluster’ and ‘Venus’.

You can order plants of Coreopsis ‘Redshift’ from Hayloft Plants and also from Dove Cottage Nursery.

Read More...