Every plant tells a tale...

I've stopped working in the garden for a few days. This is the time to enjoy, perhaps pick a strawberry or two or deadhead a rose as I pass.

As I meandered through our garden today I realized how many of the plants and flowers have fond associations with people and places over the years.

There covering the ground in a dense mat sprinkled with tiny pink flowers is Geranium Tanya Rendell. 
Richard Rendall ran his own Nursery near where we stayed in Orkney. He told us about breeding this geranium and  the process he had to go through to get it recognized. Richard then named it after his daughter. Hardy geraniums (as opposed to pelargoniums) grow well in Orkney and seem suited to the maritme climate.

The Gunnera manicata is another plant with an Orkney connection. It's needs a sheltered spot to grow there with any success but it does like the rich moisture retentive soil. It's little cousin gunnera magilanica did very well for us as ground cover in Orkney but is not so successful here in the sandy soil of the east coast.

I probably wouldn't have chosen to plant the giant version of the gunnera but it was given to us as a present  by Orkney friends Christopher and Matilda. They have a very exposed site looking over to the Hills of Hoy. The wind would have shredded the leaves. So it came to us bulging out of it's pot, desperate for a bit of space.  This was the one thing in short supply in this garden and the plant needs curtailed the choices even more.

It now sits happily  at the back of part of the shade garden with  plenty of compost. It's put on a huge spurt of growth in a couple of years and large leaves do a good job in hiding some wires and bare wall in the summer. What we do if it grows to full size is a question for another day.....

Then there is the Phlomis russeliana from my Edinburgh gardening pal, Lynn. It's a lovely buttery yellow and has wonderful whorls of flowers up the stem. The seed heads carry on the interest into the autumn. I was so pleased when it flowered profusely last year. This year there are no flowers. I think it's having a rest. So this is a photo of last years seed heads.

My mother was very fond of the double bloodroot Sanguinaria canadensis and we have several plants in the shade border. However she bemoaned the fact that her bloodroot would flower one year and then disappear never to be see again.  Perhaps it wasn't happy where she planted it in stoney dry ground next to the front door for visitors to admire. This is one of ours flowering earlier this year.

 

The other plant grown by my mother (and her father before her) is the annual scarlet flax Limnum grandiflorum. It was such a part of the gardens where I grew up as was the pink phlox. For my opinion of pink phlox see my earlier post Blunt Spades and Pink Phlox

 I usually scatter a few seeds of scarlet flax in a pot or in some open spot but I forgot this year. I do miss the delicate scarlet flowers waving in the breeze. Perhaps this post will jog my memory next year.


Several plants (and the sails over the table) remind me how much our garden was influenced by our two trips to New Zealand to see family in Christchurch. There are some great plants people over there and they seem to have ideal growing conditions for so many different varieties of plants.

In this garden we planted a Tea tree having seem them in New Zealand. It limped along for about eighteen months only to give up the ghost over the winter. we haven't tried one again.
We were  impressed by the oleanders growing to huge heights in peoples gardens and covered in blossom in South Island. 
You can tell that I've thought this through. As the oleander is very tender it has to stay in a pot in the greenhouse most of the time and then be lugged outside (no mean feat) for a couple of months at most if and when the sun shines. The plant (or my back) may not last! But look the flower is worth the effort.

These associations do make a plant even more special.  What memories do your plants evoke?