Horticultural highlight of the week (2014 week 12) - Honesty (Lunaria annua)

The silvery seed pods of honesty remind me of secondary school art lessons - still life drawing in particular. Drape a cloth over some boxes on a table, add one violin, a sheeps skull, some other random objects 'acquired' from the biology room and garnish with some dead stems of honesty. Also known as 'silver dollar' the seed pods are silvery and papery, you probably know them even if you can't put that name to them.

Much as I loved still life drawing, I now prefer honesty flowers and they are now one of the earliest splashes of colour in the garden. They are incredibly good at self-seeding - they now exist in all the places where I didn't originally plant them (including growing out of cracks between the house and paving. If you get enough of them they create an amazing purple mist that attracts bees and butterflies.

Honesty (lunaria annua)

Honesty (Lunaria annua) - self-seeded in a dry patch by the greenhouse

They can start to look a bit scraggy one the flowering is over - which is a matter of weeks. It takes some time for the seed pods to mature - so there's a long period where they don't look their best.

I grew mine from seed, bought from Thompson & Morgan. They are perennial, and don't flower in the first year but they are super-easy to grow and once you have them, you've got them for life.

And here's the gratuitous close-up (of course taken with my squidcam macro lens)...

Honesty (lunaria annua) - close up taken with squidcam macro lens

Horticultural highlight of the week (2014 week 11) - Hellebore (unknown variety)

Hellebores are actually the first flower to appear in my garden but they are a bit of a slow burner and (in my opinion) don't actually reach their full glory for several weeks after first appearing. The first hellebore flower appeared in January, and in mid-March they are still going strong and making an impact, even though they are now competing with narcissi, muscari and primroses.

The varieties in my garden were here when I arrived, purple, white and some pale purple and all clumped together - I've since separated them - they do well in shady spots so I've moved them to the side of the garden sheltered by the fencing. They're easy to dig up and replant - the roots are compact and loose and the plants seem to suffer no harm from being moved.

Helleborus (unknown variety)

They self-seed incredibly easily, in fact the areas around the mature plants are dotted with babies - they are almost weed-like in their proliferation. The tiny black mustard-like seeds are easy to collect. I usually just weed the offspring out - but as we are probably moving this year I am going to nurture a few of them to take with me - although I won't be sure of their colour pedigree until they flower.

Helleborus (unknown variety)

To allow the flowers to really stand out, I cut back all the previous year's evergreen foliage to ground level once the flower stems have reached full height. The foliage is usually starting to look a bit tired and ragged by then anyway. It doesn't seem to hard the plants - new foliage re-appears every year.

Helleborus (unknown variety)

Helleborus (unknown variety - white)

As is the rule for 2014, here's a squidcam macro shot of one of my hellebores.

Helleborus - close up of stamens using squidcam macro lens 

Horticultural highlight of the Week (2014 week 10) - Primrose (Primula vulgaris)

This is one of my favourite and best-loved native wildflowers and sit heads and shoulders above the gaudily coloured 'polyanthus' seen in cultivated beds on many a British roundabout and village green. Here in Sussex the advent of spring is marked by numerous clumps of primroses as much as it is by swathes of daffodils and I was very happy when one decided to self-seed itself in my herb garden.

Primrose (primula vulgaris) caught in March sunshine

That was about four years ago, and after the first year, and my efforts to carefully transplant the tiny flowerless offspring of the initial coloniser, they are now firmly established in the garden. It appears to favour well-drained soil and partial shade where it thrives - the plants that have seeded in the part-shaded gravel areas in the garden seem to be stronger and more upright, as seen here where one has appeared in the gravel surrounding the greenhouse.

Primrose (primula vulgaris)

I've now got tens of plants that appear in shady corners of the garden every spring - one of the first real signs that warmer weather is on its way.

Of course the 2014 editions of 'plant of the week wouldn't be complete without a couple of squidcam macro shots.

Primrose (Primula vulgaris) taken with Squidcam macro lens

Primrose (Primula vulgaris) taken with Squidcam macro lens

Plant of the week - Oenothera (Evening Primrose)

There's still a lot going on in my garden at the end of September, but my choice for this week took me by surprise. The evening primrose has had a second wind and exploded in a flurry of large yellow flowers - it had already flowered in late summer, producing blooms at a fairly modest rate, but it looks like this is it's 'swan song'.

Evening Primrose - Oenethera

What's also unusual is that its flowers are open during the day, rather than opening during the late evening as it did during the summer (hence it's name). This means it's being visited by bees rather than moths as you can see on the right hand side of the shot above. It feels like this one was desperate to stock up for the winter months - visiting every flower several times to make sure none were overlooked.

It was hanging around long enough for me to capture some great shots of it, body and legs dripping in pollen, gorging itself inside one of the flowers.

Evening primrose & Buff-tailed bumblebee (queen)

Evening primrose & Buff-tailed bumblebee (queen)

I pinched some seeds that were growing wild by the road at the end of the street. That was last year, and I already have mature plants. I suspect these will be self-seeding and start to pop up everywhere but I really don't mind!

Plant of the week - Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

A belated post from last week - 12th september

Strange to say that I was hard pushed to decide on the plant for this week. It may be mid-september but there's still lots going on and lots of little beauties popping up as autumn takes a grip.

What caught my eye this week was a clump of little nasturtiums tucked away in the strawberry patch and this especially bright specimen (not PhotoShop enhanced honestly!).

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

When there's not much colour in the garden that really jumps out at you, this is a little star. I remember chucking some nasturtium seeds in this spot sometime in June when I was having a clearout of old seeds. They are so resilient they don't need any care and will obviously just grow where you throw them.

They are humble plants and often overlooked, but there are some fantastic varieties about and they will self-seed year on year although I am not sure how true the colours are for second and third generation etc.

The best bit about nasturtiums is that you can eat the flowers! They have a slight peppery taste, but they look amazing in a green salad - just make sure they aren't covered in blackfly as mine usually are if they are blooming in mid-summer.

Plant of the week - Crocosmia

There are two important things that I don't know about the crocosmia in my garden. First off, I don't know how they got there, and second, I don't know if I actually really like them. Let me explain...

Crocosmia

I didn't plant any crocosmia, and there weren't any in the garden when we first got here. But then suddenly I noticed them on their silent invasion, in a couple of spots in the garden, unobtrusive, but biding their time.

Then one year I noticed that I was having to pull a lot of the blade like shoots up from various places around the garden, I kept pulling them up - they kept re-appearing. It seemed like they were coming in under the neighbour's fence (or were they actually escaping from my garden into theirs). I'd been throwing them in the compost, but they were surviving and actually growing in the compost. Action was needed - an extermination program.

Aside from the two 'managed' clumps in the garden, I now treat crocosmia in the same way I treat bindweed - all traces of them go to the tip rather than the compost, but its still an ongoing job to keep them under control. The second clump in the garden started off as a couple of leaves which I left as it was in a good spot. A year later and its a huge swathe of leaves and fiery orange blooms.

Crocosmia

So why is such a troublesome specimen now 'plant of the week'? Well secretly I actually love it, its foliage is a great colour, the leaf shape contrasts well with the other plants around it, and it provides a bit of fiery colour at a time when other flowers in my garden are fading. I love its tenacity and hardiness - in the same way a naughty child might always be causing trouble and be under your feet but is still secretly your favourite.

I have a crazy fantasy about digging up a clump and dumping it by the side of the railway cutting by the station, and that in a few years time commuters will be confronted with the sight of a bank of flaming crocosmia on their way from Brighton to London. So if it ever happens - you know how it got there!

Well I don't know how it got into my garden, but I'm kind of glad that it did.

Don't buy the corms - I'll happily send out what I dig up!

Plant of the week - Sweet William 'Sooty' - Dianthus barbatus nigrescens

Sweet william is a favourite of mine, but this variety puts a twist on the traditional cottage garden classic. I originally bought seed packet of both a mixed assortment and this 'black' variety. After the initial wait of sowing seeds and nurturing them to their first bloom in their second year, they now seed themselves and appear in the garden in various spots spreading their cheery pink, white and red cushions of blooms which of course are a magnet for bees and butterflies.

Sweet William 'Sooty' - Dianthus barbatus nigrescens

The rich velvety tones you can see in this photo are actually from a third generation sowing of 'Sooty', so this offspring is not true to the darker blacker originals, but it has a beauty of its own making, a deep intense red that Anish Kapoor would be envious of. The stems have a dark ruddy-purple hue as do the leaves, making them a fantastic plant to contrast against a pale foliage or white flowers.

I don't treat these as biennials, but more like the perennials they really are, so I keep them going for a few years. They do get a big straggly from their third year but if they are mixed in with other similar hight plants (mine are next to the crocosmia and contrast well with their dagger-like leaves) then you wouldn't notice their raggedy behaviour.

I bought the original seeds from Thompson & Morgan.

Plant of the week (belated) - Poached Egg Plant (Limnanthes douglasii)

A little belated, but plant of the week for week ending 14th June 2013 is the humble poached egg plant. This little self-seeder appears everywhere in the garden now and I usually leave it to its own business. It seems to prefer drier stonier places in the garden where other plants find it hard to survive, like gravel borders and has even colonised and survived uncared for in the dry gravel floor of the greenhouse.

Poached Egg Plant (Limnanthes douglasii)

It's a modest little plant but bees love the cheerful yellow and white flowers, which makes it a hit in my garden.

I got a single seed packet from Thompson & Morgan a couple of years ago, but never had to buy seeds again as its now established itself in the garden without any additional help!