Arrived at Wisley for today's trials assessment session soon after the thunderous downpour - and just look these irises! This is the Tall Bearded Iris trial just an hour or two after the torrential rain early this morning. Every flower was still beaded with rain drops and yet - they look spectacular... Read more..

Colourful July, and we're at the peak of the season. If you're coming to visit us this week look out for some of these: On the corner of the Laboratory, the trumpet vine Campis radicans is creating a vertical carpet of deep orange. On the Top Terrace, the flowers are really starting to perform... Read more..

One of the interesting things about the Wisley trials is that not only do they highlight plants which are deserving of an Award of Garden Merit (AGM) but they also highlight plants which are unusually poor and so serve as a warning to gardeners not to grow them. The Kniphofia trial, one of the season's... Read more..

A week or two back I wrote about delphiniums which came back for a second burst of flowers long after their main flush in June. The last couple of times I was taking a look at the Wisley flower trials I also noticed some other perennials looking good late in the season. The Kniphofia trial has been a... Read more..

Kniphofias have been catching our attention recently. The Wisley trial that was completed last year highlighted many fine plants, there were ten newcomers listed in the 2011 RHS Plant Finder and a number of new varieties from the USA should be with us next year. But one vividly coloured newcomer, which... Read more..

I am sure that you can recognise a red hot poker when you see one but did you realise that there were around 70 species in the genus Kniphofia ? The majority of these species grow in the eastern half of South Africa and next week I am off on an expedition to try and see as many of these as possible in... Read more..

Do you take some "light" reading with you when you travel abroad? I think this is one of the hardest decisions I have to make whenever I travel somewhere: which books do I want? Which ones will I actually use? Do I need to keep some weight allowance to bring some books back? This trip to South... Read more..

I have now arrived at Buffelskloof and my final stop on my expedition but getting here was not a journey to remember. Apart from the long roadworks and the frequent lorries reducing speed to a crawl, those bits of the countryside that did look appealing to drive through were blighted by continual rain... Read more..

Good day - rain had stopped overnight and I was up by 6am ready to drive around the local area looking for Kniphofia with John Burrows, the manager of Buffelskloof Nature Reserve . Bad day - Wallet was missing, spent next hour looking everywhere in my cottage and luggage to no avail. To my relief, it... Read more..

Today had quite a simple brief to it, travel about 80km to the next stop at Dumbe , on the way the road goes up Oliviershoek Pass where I would find K. breviflora . Syd had assured me that it was easy to find, saying that friends of his who were not even interested in pokers had spotted it there. The... Read more..