An Englishman's Garden Adventures
Amelanchier lamarkii A perfect small garden tree with interest throughout the year The bed nearest our house is filled with woodland plants: clipped box, textured ferns, billowing Japanese forest grass, white foxgloves and irises. It is very close to the …
Read moreSmall Tree – Snowy Mespilus or Juneberry (amelanchier Lamarckii)
Latin: Muscari armeniacum ‘Estha’Season: April-May Height: 6in (15cm)Location: full/half sunSoil: any Certain varieties of garden plants just exude class, managing by some magic to transcend the merely ‘novel’ or ‘interesting’. This variety of grape hyacinth, ‘Estha’, is one such darling …
Pulsatilla vulgarisFlowering profusely on my green-roof at Easter this year The Pasqueflower — Latin name Pulsatilla vulgaris — is a rare wild flower of the UK being found now on just a few chalk and limestone grasslands. Known as the …
I have three clumps of lily turf in one of my woodland beds in my permaculture mini-woodland. They have been there for well over five years, but have only ever produced a few sparse flower spikes each year, despite the …
This is the white form of the Willow Gentian, Gentiana asclepiadea alba. It is a choice, slow growing and long-lived and reliable plant for shade or part shade. Its natural blue-flowered form is native to central and Eastern Europe, where …
In the background, white English lavender; in the foreground a white Hebe. Both plants have dense spikes containing hundreds of individual flowers which open over many days. This long sunny border in front of the greenhouse is ideal for these …
I don’t grow Hostas for their flowers; partly, because my plants are in a white garden where their role is to provide foliage texture, and most Hosta flowers are typically some shade of mauve, but also because they are are a …
This is the white Marathon or Turk’s Cap Lily (Lilium martagon var. album). I grow these bulbs in the dappled shade of a cherry tree in my Woodland Permaculture garden. It is a notable late-flowering woodland plant (June), creating bright …
Hostas are the bad-boys of shade gardening: They come in literally hundreds of named forms with leaves that vary in size from 1 inch to 2 ft across. They go particularly well with ferns and other fine leaved plants like …
This is the White asphodel (Asphodelus albus) a plant which is found in the wild from southern Spain to the Balkans. It’s a bee-friendly, garden-worthy, uber-rarity with lots of mediterranean charm. I first grew the White Asphodel twenty five years ago …