There are lots of plants that’ll bring colour to your garden in the autumn – but if you make the right choice, some of your insect buddies might add a bit of their own….

Red Admirals love Sedum....

There doesn’t seem to have been very many butterflies about this season, but the Sedum coming into bloom seems to be bringing them in – this one, and two of his friends were feasting on our Sedum ‘Frosty Morn’ today, alongwith several small tortoiseshells (but they were rather more camera shy).

If you read Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto’s book Dear Friend and Gardener (and we’re not suggesting you should – it’s a less than riveting read) one of the things you may notice is that the friends often boast to each other that they have particularly “good forms” of various plants in their gardens.   It’s never clear whether this is because the plants in question are simply performing well because they like the particular soil and climate of the gardens, or whether they are actually distinct variants of the cultivars in question.

We were reminded of this recently when we read Andrew Mikolajski’s blog in which (eventually) he tells us that he doesn’t much like Buddleja weyeriana.

Now we do like B. weyeriana, and have grown it for many years (tho’ perhaps rather self indulgently, because it’s not a big seller).   But the plant we enjoy doesn’t sound very much like the one that Andrew derides.

If you Google image search the plant, you will see a fair bit of variation in the flowers, the majority of which do look rather more like the wishy-washy orange-purple that Andrew dislikes, and few (well, none that we found) which look as nice as the  plant we’ve been growing.

So can we safely claim to have a “good form” of Buddleja weyeriana?

Is this a good one?

Lovely isn't it?

Since we last blogged about our Delphinium (autumn 2009) we’ve been carefully studying its habits, and have been very carefully propagating – so now we have maybe a dozen plants, all showing the same characteristics – pretty much conventional Delphiniums in everything they do, except the flowers.

Our picture shows a flower spike from this summer – rather denser than the spike we showed in our last blog (their fist summer flush seems stronger than the second) – and even more impressive we think.

Quite by accident – we broke one of the stems – we’ve discovered they make pretty good cut flowers too, lasting ages in water.

We’re continuing to evaluate their garden worthiness (you can’t be too careful in a trade awash with perhaps-a-little-too-hasty new plant launches) and to investigate whether we can propagate them in sufficient numbers to make them available commercially.

Next update around 2013 then!

It's a cracker isn't it?

…and there are Woodfield hybrid Lupins.

Launched at the Chelsea flower show in 1985 by nurserymen brothers Maurice and Brian Woodfield, after many years breeding work, these are surely the very best strain of this cottage garden favourite, aren’t they?

Most of this years batch are sold now; the ones in the picture are still waiting to find a good home….

Looking good on the nursery right now – the picture is of one of our parent plants in a polytunnel – its offspring, growing outside, are just budding up nicely….

Monarda Cambridge Scarlet

Monarda (aka Bergamot) often get a bad press because many of them suffer dreadfully with mildew.   We stopped growing them completely a few years ago because (like roses, which have also been struck off our stock list) we just found the spray programs they demanded too onerous.

But having tipped our toes back in their very distinctly fragranced waters (think Earl Grey tea, and Bergasol suntan lotion) we’re happy to report that M. ‘Cambridge Scarlet’ AGM, and its cousin M. ‘Croftway Pink’ AGM (also in stock here, but not showing colour yet) both seem to have very good mildew resistance.

They’ll both grow to around 90 cms tall, and will form clumps maybe 50 cms across.   They’re fully hardy, are happy in full sun or part shade, and require a reasonably moist but well drained soil.  But they’re pretty adaptable – we have them growing in our front garden where the soil is absolutely not “reasonably moist” (well drained doesn’t even come close) and they’re happy enough, the drought only seeming to dwarf their height a little.

They’ll be in flower until well into the autumn, so are an excellent addition to the herbaceous border for summer – autumn colour.

Tomato Tumbling Tom (not quite yet) Yellow

Tomato Tumbling Tom Yellow sounds like a contrivance too far doesn’t it? Not simply a tomato with a trailing growth habit, bred for growing in a hanging basket, but one with yellow skin to boot.

But if you get around the veg growers “pah, silly novelty” scepticism, you’ll find an easy, tasty, prolific, and early cropping tomato, which really will thrive in as little as a 12″ hanging basket.

Those in our picture (taken today) are just a few weeks off picking, and are going to be easy winners in the first-tommies-on-the-plate race this year.

So if you have spare airspace in your greenhouse – why?

Pulsatilla Papageno

The manic seasonal nature of working in horticulture means that at this time of year it’s easy to forget WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT. We tend to spend all our time rushing about sorting stuff on the nursery, and none of it standing back and admiring the reason we chose to work in this industry in the first place.

And so last year, when Louise found a particularly attractive Pulsatilla amongst a batch in one of the polytunnels, we made a special effort to take time out…..and planted it just outside our back door.

So this spring, every time we set off for our 60 second commute to work, we have to pass this little reminder of what we’re doing here.

We sell loads of pulsatillas every year, and if our customers get as much joy from theirs as we do from this, we’ll have spread more than a little happiness won’t we?

Pulsatilla Papageno is a seed raised strain;  the flower colour and the frilliness of the petals is entirely unpredictable – so we can probably sell you a plant which is quite like this one, but it won’t be exactly the same!

Magnolia Elizabeth

Magnolias are always a bit of a gamble in our climate;  their flowers are fried by sub-zero temperatures, but emerge long before the danger of frost has passed.   So every year we find ourselves holding our breath while they flower, in the hope that the weather remains frost free long enough for us to enjoy their display.

It’s been a good season for them this year.  They’ve been flowering in gardens around here for several weeks, and the weather has been remarkably benign.    The earliest flowerers are getting towards the end of their display without a single frost-browned petal.

And the later flowerers are hoping they’ll enjoy the same balmy conditions.

Our picture shows a newly emerged flower on one of the Magnolia Elizabeth we have on our sales area, which we’re hoping will be flowering frost-free for the next several weeks.

M. Elizabeth was introduced in 1977, and was a chance seedling from a cross between M. denudata and M. acuminata at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, New York.   It’s primrose yellow flowers set it apart from the more typical white and pink colourways in the magnolia family, and its slightly later flowering season gives it a better chance of avoiding frost damage.   It will grow (eventually) to maybe 30 feet tall, so it needs a bit of space – but it will be quite a spectacle in flower won’t it!

World's largest oxslip?

Other than being careful not to decapitate it with the hoe, we’ve done nothing to this oxslip (Primula elatior). We didn’t even plant it – the seed must have arrived in some compost we used to mulch under our beech hedge a few years ago. And it’s sown itself in probably the least hospitable spot in the garden (if you’re an oxslip anyway) – south facing, baking hot sun in summer, and on very poor, free draining sandy soil.

Which just goes to show how fickle plants can be – give them what the encyclopedias tell you is ideal conditions, and they should thrive – but sometimes they’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head, and thrive anyway.

The hellebores just outside our back door have eliminated any room for doubt that we’re well into the headlong charge towards spring……

Helleborus Pink Lady