Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Matsumoto asters are popular with florists, being larger and showier than your average aster. This posy was part of an arrangement in the floristry section of this year’s Southport Flower Show. More from there to come. Continue reading “Flower of the Day: Lavender Matsumoto Asters”
Last month I was lucky to see a rare tropical shrub/small tree, Osa pulchra, in full bloom. Huge, trumpet-shaped flowers hung just overhead, still and improbable, translucent against light pouring through the magnificent high roof of one of Kew Garden’s conservatories.
At the time I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but I knew it was special. To an observer I must have appeared like a human version of the His Master’s Voice dog. Continue reading “Osa pulchra: a rare tropical plant that needs a midwife”
I’m sure many people do a double-take when they first see this unusual delphinium. While the ruffled flowers are a bold, sweet colour – we might call it light red, perhaps, or coral or salmon, with just a hint of a green stripe – they are contrary to what we’d expect. Continue reading “Delphinium ‘Red Lark’”
In contrast to my recent post celebrating wild foxgloves, here’s one of several garden forms of Digitalis purpurea with cream flowers and maroon spots. Continue reading “Spotted Foxglove (And Infinite Variety)”
While I enjoy seeing foxgloves in gardens, I can’t help comparing the straight, sturdy, varieties of commerce to wild foxgloves that weave around Lancashire’s fields and country lanes.
Rarely without some form of wave or bend – the ‘nod’ of folklore – wild foxgloves can grow with aplomb wherever they find themselves, high or low. Much of their charm is in their willy-nillyness. Continue reading “The Wildness of Foxgloves (Digitalis Purpurea)”
Shared for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
This ethereal, drift-forming woodland plant opens from puckered, lilac-pink buds to pure blue flowers shaped like bells, cowslips or petticoats, depending on your perspective. Continue reading “Mertensia virginica (Virginia Cowslip; Virginia Bluebells)”
Susan Rushton 