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PLANT OF THE WEEK #102: Penstemon ‘Blackbird’
I’ve always been in two minds – maybe more than two – in regard to penstemons. Yes, they’re generous in bloom, and yes, they come in a good range of colours. They flower for an incredibly long time,...
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Lost, But Happy
I spent last week in the second-most remote community on the continent. Which must make it one of the most remote communities in the world. Besides loving the work I was doing, assisting with an arts...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #101: Miscanthus sinensis var. condensatus ‘Cosmopolitan’
So there are miscanthuses that fall into a ‘landscape’ category – that look fabulous en masse, or repeated about – and there are ‘novelty’ miscanthuses that should stand alone – that you only need one...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #100: Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’
One of the great ‘discoveries’ of my unwatered ‘steppe’ garden has been Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’. I’d admired it, from a distance, for several years. It’s always hard to recall why you overlooked...
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How would your garden perform under the Jane Austen taste test?
So while bed-bound with covid last week, I wallowed in some culture and read Jane Austen’s Emma, having heard from a reliable source that it eclipses the better known, and perhaps better loved, Pride...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #99: Caryopteris ‘Heavenly Blue’
OK, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that today’s Plant of the Week has to be out of season. Once the last of the autumn leaves blows away in my garden, there’s really nothing to see until the first...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #98: Helleborus argutifolius
It’s a complete mystery to me why, of 100,000+ photos of plants in my photo library, I don’t have a single decent pic of Helleborus argutifolius. It more than merits tens, if not hundreds of pics....
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Instagram – source of gardening fuel or FOMO?
I sat to down to write this, bar-heater blaring by my legs, overlooking a scene of windswept monochrome bleakness, and turned – just for a few seconds – to instagram. There I found myself...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #97: Cupressus sempervirens
If only there were more trees with the emphatic verticality of the Italian cypress. But there aren’t. The Italian cypress (also known as pencil pine) is a stand alone, in every sense. It stands...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #96: Elaeagnus x ebbingei
Elaeagnus x ebbingei is a great big brute of a shrub. At a maximum of about 5m tall by the same wide, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever want to release it into your garden in an untamed form. But it’s...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #95: Cotoneaster horizontalis
OK, I’m a bit nervous about this one. I guess it comes down to whether Plant of the Week is about raising plant awareness or whether it represents plant promotion. For I want to write about...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #94: Viburnum opulus (‘Kalyna’ to Ukrainians)
My suggestion for plant of this week is one which holds deep significance to a country currently enduring great suffering. The war in Ukraine continues to shock the world with Russia’s obscene...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #93: Carex testacea
If you’re a long-term reader of The Gardenist, you’ll know that I’m forever in two minds about evergreen grasses. Nearly everyone in a climate sufficiently moderate to grow the wide range of...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #92: Parthenocissus quinquefolia (Virginia creeper)
Like most kids, I grew up plant-blind. But Virginia creeper, along with its relative Boston ivy, somehow broke through and made itself known to me. I recall, from the earliest age, a charming old...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #91: Crocus speciosus ‘Oxonian’
Decades ago my gardening friends and I attended a lecture given by the renowned Irish gardener Helen Dillon. To be frank I remember little of that event except one outlandish statement declared by...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #90: Plectranthus ecklonii
How would you respond if told there was a new deep purple/blue salvia on the market, that absolutely laughed at root-ridden soil and flowered brilliantly in quite deep shade? First, I’d be skeptical....
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Two Wild Books
Two really fabulous books have arrived in the mail over the last few months. One I bought and one was a freebie, given that some of my design work appears in it. (Whether the latter revelation...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #89: Lespedeza thunbergii
I vividly remember the day I thought I had to get better acquainted with Lespedeza. How could I forget? That crazily magical colonnade of plane trees at Villa Melzi, each pair framing an...
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I wish I knew more about bulbs
Apologies to my neighbours, who had a near perfect autumn morning on Saturday partially ruined by several hours of brush-cutter noise as I cut back my rough grass, into which is planted several bulb...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #88: Koelreuteria paniculata
The very first time I recall hearing the name Koelreuteria was at Sissinghurst, where there was a comically lame specimen in the cottage garden. No one seeing it would ever be tempted to grow one....
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