Malvern flowers

Never mind the show gardens: at Malvern it was the Floral Pavilion which just blew me away.

Every bit as good as bigger shows like Chelsea and Hampton Court, I was like a kid let loose in a sweetshop: actually I was entirely paralysed when I first went in as I just wanted everything I saw.

To save the bank balance I contented myself with taking photos of my very, very favourites. Well, mostly: I will admit three more scented geraniums and a Gillenia trifoliata somehow found their way into my bag.

So here were the ones that got away:


Camassia leichtlinii 'Pink Selection'
(Avon Bulbs)

Euphorbia dulcis 'Chamaeleon'
(Claire Austin Hardy Plants)

Paris quadrifolia
(Mary Green at The Walled Garden, Lancs)

Hosta 'White Feather'
(actually, I didn't want this one, but I thought it was proof if proof were needed that breeders always push it that little bit too far)

Dicentra 'Bleeding Hearts'
(Cath's Garden Plants)

Epimedium 'Amber Queen'
(Edrom Nursery)

Trillium sulcatum
(Chris Cooke Plants)

Didn't we have a luvverly day, the day we went to Malvern...

Yes, I was there too...!

What an occasion. Herb-tasting shenanigans from the Three Men and Jekka, bloggers galore, and even Princess Anne joined in the fun.

Much chatting was done: a special mention must go to Frances and Gail, who made the heroic journey all the way from Tennessee just to get rained on yet were utterly delightful about it all and didn't moan a bit about their sudden transition from shorts-and-tshirts temperatures to something requiring thick jumpers (though being in close proximity to genuine, 24-carat royalty I hope made up for it a bit). Also the lovely Ewa who joined us from Poland (presumably quite at home climate-wise) and Yolanda Elizabet who turns out to be an irrepressibly effervescent Dutchish person. And very many thanks to the ever-fabulous VP, who organised it all, and Helen, who bravely opened her gorgeous garden and home to us so we could eat pizza and sit on her stairs.

Right, before this all starts getting unbearably luvvie I shall stop there, and talk about the show: which is why, of course, we were all there.

It was the first time I've ever been to Malvern: a revelation to see the change of plant palette from the high-summer iris, alliums and agapanthus of Chelsea and Hampton Court, to the spring aquilegia, geums and dicentra of Malvern. Medals were much in evidence, though just two golds - to the 'Recovery and Wellbeing Garden', from the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (a little heavy on the chicken house, in my view, but lots of robustly healthy veg) and the rather gorgeous 'The Youth of Old Age', from Graduate Gardeners Ltd., which also won best in show.

But medals shmedals: here are the ones you've all been waiting for.

The Constant Gardener Awards for Malvern 2010

Plant of the Show 2010: Rheum palmatum

with hostas and coppery young leaves of Cotinus 'Grace' in 'The Youth of Old Age' (gold, best in show)

and teamed with Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba': 'ReSource Garden' (Silver-Gilt)

Planting Scheme I'd Most Like to Take Home: The Inside Out Garden (Silver)

It's not just because it's got veg in it- honest. The elegant, sweeping curves were echoed on the other side in aquilegia, swelling box balls and lavender. Heavenly.

Most Original Use of Plants: ReSource Garden (Silver-Gilt)

That's single-stemmed Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' used as punctuation to pale lilac iris and Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum'

Best re-working of a tired theme: The sedum roof in 'As Time Goes By' (Silver)

No boring-but-eco-friendly tile-effect sedum matting here: these are individual sedum plug plants (plus a few houseleeks) chosen for their variations in foliage texture and planted lovingly into capillary matting on a small shed roof. There was a life and movement to the planting you never find on mass-produced sedum roofs - and it made me want to do it myself

Most covetable paving: The Woodland Edge Garden (Silver)

Well, OK, it's decking, but I loved that contrast between the sawn logs and the circular decking.

Wackiest paving idea of the year: 10 Green Bottles Might Just Build A Wall
(School garden)

Yes, those are cut-off lemonade bottles. So wierd it almost works.

Fence of the year: The Owl & The Pussycat (Silver)


Hand-woven by the designer and heart-breakingly beautiful.

Highly Commended: The Morgan Garden

The one redeeming feature in an otherwise lamentably blokey garden: an exquisite espaliered apple tree 'fence' in full blossom

Sculpture of the Year: The Owl from 'The Owl & The Pussycat' (Silver)


Isn't he gorgeous?

And finally.... Bonkers Idea of the Year: Hansel & Gretel Fairytale Garden (Silver-Gilt)


That is toast on that roof. Real toast.

I am told by Deb (who hobnobs with royalty: it is she meeting Princess Anne in the main picture) that the designer cooked the toast and nailed it to the roof, only to have a flock of crows descend on it moments later and strip the lot off again. He did not give up and go find some plastic toast: no, he went out and bought another load of bread, toasted it again, nailed it on and this time laquered it in place.

Bonkers, or what?

Scents and sensibility

Hold onto your wallets! Plant fair season has begun!

Despite their utterly lethal effect on my bank balance, I can't resist a good plant fair. I go to all of them: the one at the village hall, the fundraiser at a local garden, and most of all the rare and unusual plant fairs. I don't often get a proper Rare Plant Fair coming to my neck of the woods apart from the London ones, which almost always seem to happen when I'm nowhere near London. But a very close second are the Plant Heritage plant fairs run by local groups and always packed with choice nurseries from all around the area (and sometimes considerably outside it).

So it was last Sunday when we had a single rainy day amid two weeks of relentless sunshine and that was the day Plant Heritage's Surrey Group held its plant fair (the first of three! Oh happy days...) There was much sploshing about with umbrellas and dripping hats: the stallholders were stalwart and resolute and Very Very British. And would you believe there was quite a crowd of galosh-wearing gardeners, also being Very British about the weather and shopping like mad.

I'm not allowed to buy any more plants for the garden at the moment. Not that it stops me, but I'm trying not to stock up my borders too much more as it'll all just have to be dug out again after we sell the house and that will just make me feel guilty.

So I was munging around feeling frustrated when I caught sight of this little corner of an un-named stall.



I am usually a little snobby about pelargoniums. They're all right, but have something of the granny about them even if they're in trendy shades of plum purple (the only ones I can bear to have about the place. Or maybe white).

But these, dear reader, aren't just pelargoniums: these are scented-leaved pelargoniums.

It's at times like this I wish this were a scratch-and-sniff blog. Take those leaves between your fingers and rub gently. Your fingers will come away redolent of smoky cinnamon; perfumed with the scent of rose-petals; tangy with lemon.

Pelargonium 'Little Gem': rose-lemon scents

The flowers are small and delicate and not at all showy, just as I like them: I can even forgive them for being mostly pink. As with most plants which are all about the foliage, they have such very interesting foliage, too.


Pelargonium 'Crispum Variegatum': another lemony one
It's not often I like a variegated leaf, but this is not variegation for the sake of variegation. Small and interestingly crinkled, the leaves give off a spicy citrus scent if you brush past it. This one can apparently be trained to shape: now that might make topiary interesting.


Pelargonium 'Lara Jester'
I think I like the rose-scented leaves best: they certainly have the sweetest perfume. I covet 'Attar of Roses' and one day will find it again: it remains the one that got away after I decided a few years back that a huge plant for just three quid was one too many for the car boot. How wrong can you be.

Other scents are definitely more savoury and might best be described as 'interesting' - certainly spicy rather than conventionally perfumed. But one day I shall build up enough plants to pick and dry the leaves for pot-pourri, and then they will come into their own: I dream of lemony P. graveolens, or P. odoratissimum which is said to smell of Granny Smith apples. 'Prince of Orange' - does what it says on the tin - 'Copthorne' - smells of cedar - and P. dichondraefolium, smelling of black pepper, are close behind.

As it was, I came away with P. 'Ardwick Cinnamon' (white flowers, leaves the scent of cakes in autumn), P. 'Cy's Sunburst' (variegated gold with a lemony fragrance) and the intriguingly curly-leaved P. graveolens 'Bontrosai', with a perfume of roses. I always said I wouldn't start collecting plants, but I fear I may have succumbed.

Making meadows while the sun shines

I mentioned a little while ago in one of my endless posts about the on-going saga of the house move that I was stewing up a plan to tart up the neglected central section of my garden with a metaphorical coat of paint in the shape of some annual meadow flower seeds from Pictorial Meadows.

Just to reiterate what a state it was in throughout most of last year, here's the horror pic again:

I think I referred to the planting of a meadow as 'a quick fix'. What I had forgotten was that when you decide you're going to perk up the living room with a quick coat of matt emulsion, and then you get out the gear and start to actually do it, you find that first of all, the corners of the wallpaper need sticking down where they've started curling up... then that dent needs filling... and that bit where the kids threw a trainset at the wall and took a chunk out will need repapering altogether, which means I'll probably end up having to do the whole wall... and in the end you've got a huge job on your hands.

So it is with the creation of meadows from scrap land.

On the first occasion when it looked as if it would stay dry for more than six hours - which, it being March, was quite a while later - I sprayed the lot with glyphosate (I am what's generally known as pragmatically organic - i.e. I'll avoid chemicals wherever possible but when it's absolutely necessary, such as clearing weedy ground, I reach for the weedkiller).

And two weeks later the above weedy mess was reduced to this:


Still not pretty, but at least you could imagine you might be able to make something of it now. Good thing too, as by now my little 50g packet of seeds was on my windowsill and calling to me seductively every morning.

Right, I thought, I'll just hoe up the dead topgrowth and then I can rent a rotavator and have a fun day playing with power tools.

Unfortunately, some of the dead topgrowth proved less than willing to move. So I stuck in a fork to see what was going on. And this is what I found.


Seven year's worth of couch grass had not been so much as mildly inconvenienced by my single application of glyphosate: though the topgrowth had gone, the roots were hale and hearty and doing a passable impression of spaghetti.

By now I'd run out of time to allow more topgrowth to come through so I could apply a second round of weedkiller: and I'd learned my lesson from a certain TV gardener who has never quite lived down his decision to rotavate an allotment containing couch grass roots (which, I understand, he has now sensibly abandoned so someone else can dig them out properly). So - with a wistful glance in the general direction of the hire shop - I'm getting behind my trusty digging fork and painstakingly, painfully doing it all by hand.

Two hour-long sessions later - it's 15ft x 30ft, so we're not talking small patch here - and here's what it's looking like:


Nearly there. Hopefully I shall be able to bring you some prettier pictures soon. And next time I start wittering on about how easy something's going to be, bop me over the head or something until I start talking sense again.

Garden bloggers' Q & A

I'm a bit of a sucker for those quiz things where people have to answer the same set of questions and thus reveal a lot about themselves you wouldn't otherwise have found out. So how could I resist when Su Harris, who lives in Suffolk and whose new but already rather fine blog can be found here, said she'd picked me for a shiny new pair of awards: the Beautiful Blogger Award and the One Lovely Blog Award.




Thanks Su, especially for the chance to indulge myself shamelessly. The idea is you list seven random things about yourself: since it's random, I think it can be pretty much anything, but I'm never any good at thinking up interesting things so I hope I'm not breaking the rules by picking seven questions from the Guardian's Q&A in the Saturday magazine (not, you'll be glad to hear, the one about sex).

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Beth Chatto, for continuing feisty and undeterred ploughing her own furrow and letting her own curiosity and energy lead her instead of borrowing other people's ideas.

What has been your most embarrassing moment?
I once settled myself down on the loo in front of a bathroom window which happened to have no curtains on it (we'd only just moved in): a moment later it was brought to my attention that there was a large, loud and boisterous bonfire night party going on in the garden directly facing our house.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My nose is exceedingly long and pointed.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
I eat crunchy peanut butter from the jar with a teaspoon when nobody's looking.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
A large two-acre field of sandy loam with a spectacular view, right outside my back door.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Actually, absolutely, stunning and lovely.

What's the closest you've come to death?
I once travelled at speed up the side of a very high mountain in the Caucasus near Chechnya in a clapped-out Skoda with two Russians swigging neat vodka out of a two-litre bottle. When the driver got out at the top (the bottle by now empty) he could no longer stand. To this day I have no idea how we didn't go over one of the precipitously steep drops at the side of the crumbling road.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
That this too shall pass.

Now all I have to do is to nominate my own bloggers to receive the award: brace yourselves for some random revelations from:

VP
Victoria at Victoria's Back Yard
Claire at Plantpassion
The Patient Gardener
The lovely and inimitable Esther

Feel free to either post more random things than the not-entirely-random selection above or answer the same questions if you want. And if anyone else wants to join in be my guest!

Wordless Wednesday

Tulipa 'Rococo' about to unfurl

Moving matters #5: Of philistines

We are still trying to sell our house.

Apart from a little flurry where we briefly thought someone had bought it, we have watched noses being turned up at the rate of about two a week.

This is because - and I am about to launch on a rant of Colbornian proportions (if not style) here - people are philistines.

As I have mentioned before, my garden is looking a bit spesh at the moment. Tulips a go-go, forget-me-nots smiling at the sunshine, grass a-greening and blossom sprinkling the trees. It doesn't get much more beautiful than this, and it's a great improvement on our early days of house-selling when we were trying to convince everyone that our expanse of humps huddled over chilly bare soil would eventually look really spectacular. Honest, guv.

Well, now it does look spectacular. And you know what happened the other day? This nice couple came round, made appreciative noises about the house and its proximity to a good primary school, then walked into the garden.

They traversed the tulips, skirted the wendyhouse, glanced at the industrious plant-production going on in greenhouse and shed and peered at the pond.

Then they returned to the bit where you can look over the fence into next-door's garden. Now, I adore my next-door-neighbours who are the friendliest and most cheerful family you could ever wish to live cheek-by-jowl with. But they wouldn't mind me saying their garden is basically a 200-foot long football pitch.

"Ah," said our erstwhile buyers. "Now that's the sort of garden we'd be looking for."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHGHHHHHHHHH
HHHMMMMMMFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!

What IS IT with people? WHY can't they show even the teensiest smidgen of imagination? Let alone creativity? And as for connection with the soil... clearly disappeared under a coating of Dulux-painted plasterboard decades ago.

I'm not asking for an appreciation society for my garden: just some sign that it is a good thing to have outside space which is cared for and used with an eye for beauty and enjoyment of nature.

So many of the miserable, limited-horizon people coming through our door seem to expect a takeaway garden. One you can buy off the shelf, plonk behind the back door to fill up that intimidating place called Outside so it looks more or less "done" and then forget about it.

Never mind that it is a living thing with the irritating habit of growing. In fact flowers are a bit of a pain, aren't they? They come, and then they go, and then you have to clean up after them.

Suburbia is taking over the world. And I don't mean that in a nice way.

No wonder people are selling off their back gardens hand over fist so they can be built on. It's only just occurred to me, after years of making other excuses (population density, housing crisis, yadayadayada) that it's actually because they don't, in fact, want a back garden. If you build on land it's a convenient way of stopping all those annoying growing things appearing, isn't it? Hey - get this. You don't even have to mow it. Low maintenance or what?

No wonder new-builds are so popular with their itty-squitty handkerchief-sized gardens. No wonder half my writing is about how to do gardening without a garden. And no wonder people look at me as if I'm mad when I say one of the reasons I want to move away from my 200ft x 30ft garden is because I haven't got enough outside space.

I have reached three conclusions from this bruising and to be honest profoundly depressing process.

1) we're going to have a bloody tough job selling our house.
2) I live too close to London.
3) I like gardeners more than any other people on the planet.

Chelsea sneak preview

Hot off the press, exclusive, never-before-seen.... the plants which will feature this year at Chelsea.

Well, all right, it's not giving much away. Of course at this time of year nothing's in flower as there's a month to go before they'll reach their peak of perfection. But it was really wonderful to see them all there in one of Crocus's six polytunnels' worth of Chelsea gardens, just waiting for their moment in the spotlight.

This was all because Crocus opened up its nursery today for one of their open days - they're held three times a year, and they're a bun fight. Hundreds of people descend on the nursery to snap up loads of bargains and, it being Crocus, some wonderfully well-grown plants.

I must here declare an interest, of course, because I do work for Crocus, though on the kitchen gardening side so I was there just to have a good nose around like everyone else.

Crocus wrote the book on supplying plants to Chelsea, and has to some extent cornered the market: they're doing the plants for Tom Stuart-Smith's garden (sure to be utterly awe-inspiring) and Andy Sturgeon's too: talk about working for two exacting taskmasters. There may be others, too (though that's a state secret. Well, they're not telling me, anyway.)

As well as the polytunnels they've got what looks like several acres of plants outside, too. So... what can I reveal?

Well, not a lot. But Onopordums (those enormous great big Scotch thistles) look like they could be in for a starring role:


...and outside there were a lot of very dreamy phloxes...


I'm not entirely sure they should have been in flower, but here's a close-up anyway.

Pretty, aren't they?

And here's another entirely random shot of some gorgeous big cuddly box balls all rootballed up and ready to go.

As usual, I found all those serried ranks of mouthwatering plants impossible to resist, though I did try to be restrained and sensible. So I came home laden with:

3 Monarda 'Beauty of Cobham'
3 Anchusa 'Loddon Royalist'
3 Agapanthus roots
1 Molinia caerulea 'Transparent'
1 Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'
1 Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light'

Those last three because I've always felt that one Stipa gigantea - albeit large and well established - and one Anemanthele lessoniana - ditto - was less than a full quotient of grasses, so my garden has always required more. That should do it.

I highly recommend Crocus's open days: brilliant for a bargain and for a bit of snooping around (in the nicest possible way!) The next one will require you to sharpen your elbows before attending though - it's the Chelsea sell-off on June 6th.

Wonder how much they'll want for one of those onopordums...

Good tulip, bad tulip

Right, that's quite enough cheerfulness, time to start complaining again.

My tulips are lovely, and I feel a little mealy-mouthed saying anything but delighted things about them, but they are not as they should be.

As usual I popped a slew of extra tulips in last autumn to back up what might or might not have survived the winter: I have pretty good tulip-overwintering soil, being sandy and free-draining, but you never can tell.

However the tulips I put in were not, you might say, the tulips they purport to be.

For example:

Tulipa 'Apeldoorn'

Good tulip:


Bad tulip:



Tulipa 'White Triumphator'

Good tulip:


(with thanks to Crocus for the pic)

Bad tulip:


And even worse tulip:


Tulipa 'West Point'

Good tulip:

(Crocus again)

Bad tulip:

The 'Queen of Night' are looking like they ought to at the moment, but there is an ominous streaking to my 'Orange Cassini' buds. And the 'Ballerina' and 'Spring Green' aren't open yet so I shall be interested to see what we end up with there.

It's not that I'm complaining exactly: I still have a spectacular display of rather lovely tulips (except the split 'Triumphator' - I really do detest those). But they ain't what I ordered.

To their credit the bulb company have apologised profusely and I shall be enjoying a free supply of 450 tulip bulbs this autumn. But I do have to wonder what happened.

Did they think most people wouldn't know their 'West Point' from their 'President Kennedy' and don't care anyway ('it's yellow, innit?')

Or is there some wierd virus mutation thing going on here? Is the purity of tulip bulbs becoming muddied by the endless hybridising and the multiple-million bulb turnovers of the big Dutch companies?

Answers on a postcard, please...

It's not often I like my garden but...

...today I do.

The sun is shining, the sky is clear and blue and aeroplane-free (thank you, oh thank you Icelandic volcano) and my tulips are out and singing to the world. I was clipping my rosemary hedges when I glanced up and saw this. And I grinned, rather foolishly, but entirely happily.

This, I do believe, is what it's all for. What more can a girl ask?

A little update

You may, or no doubt may not remember that I went shopping in January and cleared out the entire stock of past-sellby-date bulbs at my local garden centre.

So I thought it's high time I let you know how they all performed. And besides it's a good excuse to post some pretty spring flower photos.

	Pot 1: Chionodoxa luciliae followed by Oxalis adenophylla No sign of the Oxalis yet but I'm sure they'll make their presence felt shortly.
	Pot 2: Puschkinia scilloides libanotica and Narcissus lobularis Happily overlapping, and I have lost my heart to N. lobularis: such utterly heartbreaking delicacy.
	Pot 3: Chionodoxa again, mixed colours this time, followed by Anemone blanda The first colour mix I've ever actually liked!
	Pot 4: Crocus chrysanthus var. fuscotinctus followed by Scilla siberica with a final flourish from mixed Ixia The crocus flowered through March: wonderful they were too, and the Scilla were just budding up as they faded. What a combination, and I've got the Ixia to look forward to still.
	And pot 5: Anemone coronaria 'St Brigid' possibly but not probably overlapping with Tulipa 'Rococo' No overlapping going on just yet, but I'm so excited about these. And who could fail to be with such intriguingly wierd buds unfurling before your eyes.

By way of conclusion: they've all flowered at the end of the stated flowering times (i.e. if it said on the label "Flowers from Feb-April" they started in April) - but they've all, amazingly, flowered.

This is so what I'm going to do next year as well. I do love a good bargain!

Gardening on air #4: Of Austen and arcadia

Did you know the 18th century landscape designer Humphry Repton turns up in Jane Austen's novel, Mansfield Park?

No, I didn't either: but a rather wonderful programme about him in the series 'Escape to the Country', about people who make the transition from city to countryside, had me scurrying to my dog-eared edition of Ms Austen's book to check. It's true - it's the bit in chapter 6 where they're talking about Sotherton Hall:

"It wants improvement, ma'am, beyond anything. I never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn that I do not know what can be done with it."

"No wonder that Mr. Rushworth should think so at present," said Mrs. Grant to Mrs. Norris, with a smile; "but depend upon it, Sotherton will have every improvement in time which his heart can desire."

"I must try to do something with it," said Mr. Rushworth, "but I do not know what. I hope I shall have some good friend to help me."

"Your best friend upon such an occasion," said Miss Bertram calmly, "would be Mr. Repton, I imagine."

"That is what I was thinking of. As he has done so well by Smith, I think I had better have him at once. His terms are five guineas a day."

The first programme in the series was all about Mr Repton and his five-guinea-a-day designs. It's presented by Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, who I have until now chiefly associated with wafting around Chelsea in very large cuffs, but clearly I've been doing him an injustice.

Humphry Repton was the one responsible for places like Tatton Park, Longleat Park, Woburn and Kenwood House. He was the one after Capability: Llewelyn-Bowen describes him as the 'feminine' to Capability Brown's 'masculine'. (He also describes him, with I hope a deliberately tongue-in-cheek irony, as 'a makeover artist'). And in a very real sense he took up the reins from Brown, beginning his landscaping career at a time when Capability Brown bestrode the landscape and indeed was largely shaping it.

Repton was all serpentine paths, terraces, balustrades and topiary, often plonking them right in the middle of Capability landscapes in an expensive 18th-century exercise in nose-thumbing. He didn't do what Capability did and sweep away any villages and pesky peasants who got in the way of the grand vision: though what Repton did wasn't much better, as he framed them as part of his presentation of a kind of bucolic Arcadia to be viewed from the terraces of the big house.

The main bit about Repton which stuck in my memory from garden history lessons is also mentioned here: he drew his gardens in beautifully-painted watercolours in red books which he then gave to his clients: the early precursor to a Vectorworks printout, perhaps.

You can listen to this edition of Escape to the Country until next Sunday by the miracle of Listen Again: it's here.

Plant envy

I turned up at a client's garden for the first time in a little while the other day to find this.

Isn't it beautiful? It is, of course, the dog's tooth violet, Erythronium dens-canis, and I am spitting mad.

The reason I'm so bloody furious is that I can't grow the damn thing. Never have been able to. I must have wasted twenty quid over the years on buying its funny-looking bulbs and though I have planted them by the book - partial shade, moist but well-drained, lots of leafmould - they stubbornly refuse to do their stuff. Yet here they were: a little clump, nestling among the spring bulbs on the rockery. And she hadn't even really done much other than plonk them in there. When told of my incredulity at the ease with which they sprang up she just said, "Really? I've never had any trouble."

Why do gardeners always say that?

Dog's tooth violets are not the only thing I can't grow. There's quite a long list, actually.

• snowdrops (going to try the elwesii types at some point though -you never know)
• chillies (this year's failed to germinate, again)
• trilliums (but I'm in good company)
• heliotrope: how do you overwinter them?
• Nicotiana sylvestris: germinate beautifully and then sulk, permanently
• morning glory: ditto (going to try sowing in late May this year)

And if any of you lot say you've never had any trouble, I'll torture you till you tell me which plants you can't grow and then show you how brilliantly they're doing in my garden. So there.

Wordless Wednesday

Pods of Sterculia megistophylla

...and what's inside

Postcard from Borneo #7: Of the rarest plant of all

In case you were wondering: yes, we did see one.

Rafflesia keithii (I think): one of the 17 known species of this parasitic flower which appears, without leaves or stems, from the roots of the liana vine. This is something of a holy grail for enthusiastic plant-hunters: so I'm feeling very, very privileged.

This was the only one flowering in Sabah, around the area of Poring Springs near Mt Kinabalu where there's one of the highest concentrations of these extremely rare plants: private garden owners make rich pickings when the flowers appear, but since it's not possible to transplant them or grow them from seed you have to be very, very lucky to have one appear in your garden. A bit like winning the botanical lottery.

They stink. There's no way of getting around it: Capt WE Johns, in his eminent tome 'Biggles in Borneo', refers to it as smelling of 'death and corruption'. Exactly so. Just think forgotten packet of mince left in the back of the fridge for a month or so.

It's pollinated by flies, of course: nothing with such a foul smell could be anything else.

The flowers start as swellings appearing like toadstools from the ground. It can take one of these swellings between 9 and 12 months to reach flowering stage (and not all of them get there): and then the flower lasts one week before it dies.

Did you ever see anything so redolent of putrefaction in your life?