One plant I’m especially pleased to see amongst the new hardy geraniums in the 2008/2009 RHS Plant Finder, if only from one nursery, is the excellent G. phaeum ‘Mrs Withey-Price’. I brought it over from America to my Northamptonshire garden more than ten years ago and it’s t
he foliage that’s special, opening bright yellow with red spots at the base of each leaf division - lovely early in the season. As the season progresses the brightness fades to yellowish green but the display continues with white-centred, light purple flowers.
It was found as a chance seedling in the Seattle garden of plantsman Jerry Flintoff. “It was growing near G. phaeum and G. x monacense,” he told me, “and I believe also G. reflexum but I haven't seriously tried to ID it. There was either a sibling or a sport growing with it that had a yellow leaf but without the purple blotches in the sinuses of the leaf lobes - unfortunately it is also being sold and grown as 'Mrs. Withey-Price'.
“The name is a joke as there isn't a Mrs. Withey-Price, the plant was named in an oblique honor of friends (garden designers) Glenn Withey and Charles Price who love gold-leaved plants.” And note that the name has a hyphen.
There’s not much sign of those leaf spots in the picture, I found that they’re most prominent when the leaves first emerge and then seem to fade.
The Plant Finder treats as a cultivar of G. phaeum and lists just one source for ‘Mrs Withey-Price’: The Plantsman’s Preference.