My Garden

In the last decade osteospermums have moved from sprawling more-or-less hardy plants for the front of the sunny border – with a few used in containers – to valuable bushy container plants in a very wide range of colours and flower forms.

Almost all container plants are developing as trailing types as well as bushy types but good trailing osteospermum varieties have been hard to come by. The arrival of Falling Stars (Sunbrella Series) looks to change all that.

As you can see from the picture, the plants knit together well to create a flowering basket in which the plants make a neat rounded display; they never trail down too far – remember those long long Surfinia petunias which only seemed to get in the way?

Another valuable feature is that unlike some of the old creeping varieties, which would trail awkwardly if planted in a basket and show off their fat succulent stems, the stems on Falling Stars, while strong, are relatively thin and unobtrusive. And, actually, I think they’d be worth trying at the front of a sunny border as well – they’d probably make attractive summer ground cover.

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There’s a lot happening in columbines these days and the latest innovation is red, orange gold and yellow doubles. And you can see from this first picture (click to enlarge)… They really are startling.

Carrie Thomas, who runs Touchwood Plants near Swansea, is the holder of two Plant Heritage National Collections - Aquilegia vulgaris cultivars and Aquilegia hybrids. In her small garden in Wales she has a vast collection of aquilegias of all kinds and in all colours - and she is also the creator of Aquilegia ‘Volcano’.

“I had no idea that the American red and yellow species were available as doubles until about 10 years ago,” she told me. “I'd had some mixed doubles seed from an American lady but could only grow on about six plants, assuming them to be things that I'd likely already have. Imagine my surprise when I saw red and yellow, and orange and yellow doubles! These gave me a good seed-base from which to start to develop my 'Volcano' mix. I also have a hybrid that has very variable flowers in red and yellow. The offspring of this has given most of my current range.”

Carrie is now working with new acquisitions from other sources to improve her fiery doubles and to produce varieties in single colours which are consistently stable. Scroll down her webpage to see the variety of doubles now available in these fiery colours. On the way through you’ll be able to get a sense of all the other columbines in her collections.

You can order seed of Aquilegia ‘Volcano’ from Touchwood Plants.

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When nurseries propagate delphiniums from cuttings it’s a slow business. Each plant only yields a few cuttings so it can take many years to build up sufficient stocks of new varieties so that they can be introduced. So, naturally, thoughts turn to raising them from seed.

However, as with hellebores, only careful and painstaking hand pollination of selected parent plants will result in seed that produces plants which are true to colour. After all, if you want a purple delphinium for a special place in your border the last thing you need is for half the plants to have white flowers.

The first of the Centurion Series of seed raised delphiniums from The Netherlands was introduced in 1997 and now with the arrival of ‘Centurion Lilac Blue Bicolour’, the total comes up to seven colours. It takes time to get it right.

The bicoloured flowers of ‘Centurion Lilac Blue Bicolour’ are soft lilac and pale blue with a clean white bee in the centre; the result is tall, well filled spikes in a lovely soft shade ideal for a pastel border. This variety is too new to have featured in the 2008 Wisley trial of delphiniums from seed, but its sister ‘Centurion Sky Blue’ was given an Award of Garden Merit.

Sow the seed before the end of February and the plants should flower in late summer in their first year, though often not at their full height. Next year they’ll be majestic.

You can order seed of Delphinium ‘Centurion Lilac Blue Bicolour’ from Thompson & Morgan Seeds

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Over on my Transatlantic Plantsman blog I've just posted about a brand new vegetable - a hybrid between kale and Brussels sprouts! Seed and plants are available. And... it'll be in the shops next week. Flavour reports would be welcome.

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We see so many new roses launched every year, mostly through the familiar rose nurseries we see at the Chelsea and Hampton Court shows, that it's refreshing to see some good new varieties from a less familiar source.

Delbard Roses in France has a long tradition of introducing fine varieties. They began breeding in 1954, makes 40,000 rose crosses every year and have introduced over 260 new varieties. Their roses have occasionally been available here in the UK before but this season sees the introduction of new varieties available by mail order from Mr Fothergill's and DT Brown. They're long flowering and disease resistant and fragrant - and they look gorgeous.

La Rose du Petit Prince (‘Delgramau') (above) is a new Floribunda (Cluster Flowered) variety and another with a powerful fragrance and good disease resistance. The flowers are attractively loose in style, and its scent has overtones of citrus and verbena. It's also neat in growth, reaching just 2ft/60cm.

Ma Normandie (‘Deljumb') is a deep pink Hybrid Tea (Large Flowered) rose specially selected for its resistance to powdery mildew and its intoxicating fragrance with fruity raspberry overtones. The flowers are large too, just a little less than 6in/15cm across. It's named (My Normandy) for the unofficial anthem of that region of France.

Soleil Vertical (‘Delsar') is a climber but it's not one of those climbing roses which soon disappears over the fence. It remains a manageable size and also tends to flower low down on the plant where many climbers have nothing but bare stems. Its name (Soleil = sun) tells you that each flower is a lovely warm yellow in colour and the old-fashioned shape is always appealing. It has good disease resistance too.

It's unfortunate that Delbard have chosen this name for this lovely rose as there's already a rose of this name - in rather similar colours - introduced back in the 1930s and still grown. This new La Parisienne (‘Delpartrico') is a Floribunda (Cluster Flowered) variety which opens in yellow then matures through orange to pink and for much of its life shows an intriguing mix of colours. Its fragrance has lemony hints.

You can buy Ma Normandie (‘Deljumb') from Mr Fothergill's and from DT Brown.

You can buy La Rose du Petit Prince (‘Delgramau') from Mr Fothergill's.

You can buy ‘Soleil Vertical' (‘Delsar') from Mr Fothergill's and from DT Brown.

You can buy ‘La Parisienne' (‘Delpartrico') from Mr Fothergill's and from DT Brown.

 

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Nurseries have been turning their attention to cordylines this last year or two, and both introducing brand new varieties and picking up existing varieties from other parts of the world and bringing them to British gardeners. One of them, ‘Southern Splendour', was introduced at Chelsea and there's also been another.

Pink Passion (‘Seipin'), which appeared for the first time in the latest RHS PlantFinder and is now turning up in garden centres and even on eBay. Time it got its mention here.

Pink Passion (‘Seipin') is, I have to say, rather a startling colour. Each long and slender leaf is a combination of greyish purple in the centre and pink at the edges with the addition of white and/or beige at the tip and on older leaves and with rich magenta tones. ‘Pacific Coral' may be thought to be similar, but has olive green foliage with pink edges. Spectacular as a container specimen, Pink Passion (‘Seipin') occupies a similar place at the dazzling end of the colour spectrum as the Pennisetum setaceum ‘Fireworks' that I featured last time.

Best used as a specimen in containers - although many cordylines are hardy in many areas, the variegated ones tend to be less hardy and after this week's weather... Containers can be moved into the porch, the conservatory or the garage in this fierce winter weather.

Pink Passion (‘Seipin') was found by Paul Hummel of wholesale growers Seiont Nurseries as a sport on a batch of the old favourite Cordyline australis ‘Red Star' at a tissue culture laboratory at Myerscough College in Lancashire in 2002.

Cordyline australis ‘Pink Passion' is available from these RHS PlantFinder nurseries, from gardencentre.co.uk and, as I write at least, on eBay.co.uk.

 
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The African fountain grass, Pennisetum setaceum, is an elegant and attractive, but rather tender, ornamental grass most often seen in the form with burgundy red foliage – ‘Rubrum’. But now the first variegated form has been released.

And it’s not a variegated form of the wild green-leaved version but of ‘Rubrum’ – so the leaves really are colourful.

Reaching about  90cm/3ft in height, the attractive arching foliage is deep burgundy in colour in the central part of each leaf but pink at the edges. In the heart of the plant, where the foliage is shaded from full light, the foliage fades to green and white. The overall effect is dazzling. ‘Fireworks’ also flowers, in summer, the plumes opening in reddish-purple and turning light brown as they mature.

Unlike the more familiar fountain grasses grown in perennial borders this is not a hardy grass. It makes a superb centrepiece in a large container and with the trailing lime-yellow foliage of Helichrysum petiolare ‘Limelight’ around it, or with orange calibrachoas (not for the faint-hearted!), it makes a stupendous summer display. Make sure it gets not only plenty of sunshine but is fed regularly and does not dry out.

This new variegated form was found by Ron Strasko of Creekhill Nursery in southern Pennsylvania. He noticed a single variegated shoot on a container grown plant of P. setaceum ‘Rubrum’ on his nursery back in the spring of 2004. He separated it off, grew it on to prove that it was stable and a good grower as well as attractive. And now it’s available for the first time.

You can order Pennisetum setaceum ‘Fireworks’ from Thompson & Morgan

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Last month I published two articles on recent and upcoming developments in hellebore breeding. Both are now available online at the RHS website.

In the December issue of The Garden I wrote about hybrids between the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, and other hellebore species. Read it here.
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On this the last day of the year, I'm looking ahead to 2010 and picking out five perennials to watch for in the coming year (click the picture to enlarge it). One or two may have been available in very restricted quantities recently, but I expect all to become available by mail order during the year.

Digitalis ‘Goldcrest' With gorgeous honey-gold spikes, this is a hybrid between Digitalis obscura and D. grandiflora from David Tristram, who also raised the new hellebore hybrid I wrote up here recently. It's sterile and so is very prolific, with strong upright stems lined with those gold flowers which are speckled inside and red-tinted on the outside.

Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow' A new variegated euphorbia reckoned to be hardier and easier too grow than so many of the others we've seen. Found in Australia as a sport of plain, green-leaved E. x martinii, the foliage combines bluish green and cream with extra reddish pink tones in winter.

Acanthus ‘Whitewater' A startling new acanthus with non-spiny foliage boldly variegated in white and bright pink and with white flowers on red stems. This hybrid of Acanthus ‘Summer Beauty' is slow to get started but matures into a bold clump up to 4ft/1.2m tall.

Leucanthemum ‘Banana Cream' The best yellow flowered Shasta daisy yet. Opening in lemon yellow and maturing to buttery yellow and then cream, flowers emerge from the leaf joints below the first flower to extend the flowering season.

Geum coccineum ‘Eos' From ace Dutch breeder Marco van Noort, who also brought us Geranium ‘Sweet Heidy', this new geum brings together bright orange flowers and bright golden yellow foliage in a fiery combination.

Look out for these in the coming year, when I find sources for them I'll let you know.

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Edward Wilson began breeding penstemons in the little Worcestershire village of Pensham in 1985. In all he raised almost seventy varieties before he passed away in August and his final introductions from his breeding programme are now available from Hayloft Plants.

These include ‘Pensham Skies', the last variety he named - just a week before he passed away. As his wife Stella left Pershore Cottage Hospital that afternoon she looked at the sky and noted how similar its blue and purplish tones were to the plant he'd just named.

Also available for the first time is ‘Ted's Purple', finally naming a variety after himself - after much persuasion from his family. In deep, rich purple with flickering white highlights in the throat, like many of his introductions it's derived from his favourite ‘Pensham Just Jane' and has the same stout stems and long flowering period.

Also new is the pure white, with blushed buds, ‘Louise Wilson', named after Edward's daughter. ‘Marilyn' is vivid pink with a white throat, ‘St James' is scarlet with a red and white throat and named for a school in Malvern that raised money for the Desmond Tutu School in South Africa. ‘ Freshwater Pearl' is a lovely pale pearly pink with a white throat and a fine companion for ‘Pensham Skies'.

Ideal in sunny borders or large containers, they begin flowering in may or June and - especially if dead-headed regularly, will continue to bloom even into November.

You can order these varieties as a collection, or individually, from the Hayloft Plants penstemon page.

 

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