Red Veined Dock does’t sound too good but it is a great plant in so many ways. Yes it is a Dock weed but its stunning bright green leaves with a network of blood red veins makes it a foliage plant with great presence in any garden. The leaves can be blanched and added to …
If you want something to brighten up a dark spot and do it fairly quickly this plant could be for you. It runs around and makes sizable drifts but never swamps plants it grows with so it nicely ties any planting together. It gets to about 30cms. tall with arching branched stems and the main …
I raised this strange North American woodland plant from seed many years ago and it has great subtle charm. It can send up branched arching slightly zigzaggy stems to 1metre with tiny bells hiding under each leaf on fine bent stems that are followed by shiny red berries that look like they are floating in …
Lily of the valley is one of those iconic flowers that we all seem to have a soft spot for. It is not always easy to make it happy but a site with good light but no direct sun shine in a moisture retentive soil heavily laced with compost and leaf mould is a good …
This elegant woodland plant from Asia is a favourite of mine. It makes neat clumps of stems to 60cms. tall with fresh green foliage and pendant yellow bells in high spring. It likes classic woodland conditions with overhead deciduous shade and a soil rich in humus and if these requirements are met all should be …
This amazing perennial comes from the Canary Islands and is one of the tallest of the Genus that in flower can reach 3 to 4metres tall. Its foliage comes up in winter and looks like Fennel on steroides and in fact they are commonly called Giant Fennel and where the botanical name comes from. The …
This amazing woodland perennial from China came into my collection via an importation I did years ago from Crug farm in Wales and what a great plant it is. It comes up in spring with almost black stems and leaves and as the foliage matures it turns green whilst the stems stay black. It grows …
Most of us are familiar with the slightly weedy ground cover Lamiums and their close relatives and may well know them as Aluminium Plant. This species however makes neat clumps to about 30cms of rich green heavily veined leaves in the axils of which it produces Salvia like dusty deep mauve-pink flowers in spring. It …
No garden can do without these stunning woodland plants with their beautiful leaves and sprays of tiny spurred flowers at this time of the year. Most are fairly hardy and make lovely clumps under any deciduous tree or shrub. I keep collecting different species and forms and this one I originally imported from England and …
The wild gingers as they are called are fabulous clumping or ground cover plants and in the case of this one it has large glossy evergreen leaves often well marked with white. Under the leaves it produces stranger black and white flowers well worth looking for in late winter and spring. This one makes a …