Juniperus squamata 'Chinese Silver' and Erica carnea 'Springwood White' spotted at Wakehurst Place, Sussex, earlier this month. Who said the old conifer-and-heather combo was boring?
This is a Phyllostachys nigra in the back garden of one of my clients which has never been touched, like most of the ones I come across. As you can see, it doesn't just behave like a thug - it looks like one too.
So - you take out the thinnest of the canes, right down to the ground, leaving just the nice thick well-coloured ones. Then you remove the suckers migrating out from the main clump, as ruthlessly as possible, followed by those annoying canes that flop out to the side too much. After that, trim down the tops to the height you want - in this case there was only one stem that needed shortening as for some reason known only to itself it had headed skywards and left all the others behind. After all that, you end up with something like this:
Actually I think I overdid it a bit on removing the arching branches - this is a little upright for my liking, though I'm not sure I had much of a choice really. But anyway, it'll start leaning outwards again soon (the overriding principle of bamboo is to revert to the most troublesome way of growing at the earliest possible opportunity). The client and I also agreed that this is a bamboo in desperate need of some company (there used to be a swimming pool on that circle).
But what we both loved - and the whole point of the exercise - is this:
Aren't they lovely? Strong, slim, elegant canes of near-black, and you can actually see them now. Not only did I remove the messy ones in between, I also stripped away the leaves up to about a third of the way up. Now, that's a bamboo I can see the point of growing.
Betula utilis, Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens', and Galanthus nivalis. A little island at Wakehurst Place earlier this month: perhaps the black-and-white snowdrops-and-lilyturf thing is becoming a tad clichéd nowadays but I don't care. This looked fabulous.
I was actually standing underneath it at the time. This was Osmanthus yunnanensis in full flower - about 30ft tall and scenting the air all around with these lovely little powder-puff white flowers.
There are apparently only 11 left in the wild, and this particular one was brought back by Ernest "Chinese" Wilson in the early 20th century. It's not that difficult to get hold of these days - about ten nurseries around the country stock it. Another one for the 'must-grow-before-I-die' list...
Nearly all these plants have a story to tell. Here's a cracker: this is a Leucospermum from South Africa, but not just any leucospermum.
You might remember reading about it in 2006 when it was found, tucked into a notebook owned by Dutch merchant Jan Teerlink and left, forgotten, in the National Archives at Kew. They'd been there for over 100 years. Yet despite their hair-raising journey - the ship they were on was captured by the British Navy - some of the seeds were still viable, and this, two years on, is the result.
...also known as a feather-leaved banksia (you can see how it got its name). This is critically endangered in its native Australia, with only two or three populations left in the wild. The Seedbank is growing on dozens of them in its cool greenhouse ready to go back home. One batch was returned last year: without this work the plant would be extinct within a decade.
I did recognise one plant there - this protea, just about to flower, is from wild populations on the Cape. The Seedbank works almost exclusively with wild populations - if I understood right, it's because the lineage is purer, and seed from cultivars rarely comes true in any case. 
Aren't seeds beautiful? And yes, that is a coco de mer - largest seed on earth. When you compare it to the dust-like antirrhinum seeds I put in last week, you realise just how much variety there is in the world.
The seeds come into the seedbank in big breatheable sacks from every continent - Kew has teams of botanists working with local experts in the field finding and collecting more and more plant samples to add to the bank. This is a sample of huge sycamore-like seeds from Madagascar. I think they're called Gyrocarpus, at least that's what it sounded like - in an environment like this even if you think you know quite a lot about plants, it's not long before you're out of your depth.
They test all the seeds for viability before they store them, using digital x-ray machines and all sorts of things. Then there's the problem of working out exactly how to germinate them. Here's one way of finding out - a mat with varying temperatures in bands across it. You put the seeds in little packets in rows along the heat bands, and wait. Then those that germinate on a certain heat band reveal the temperature the seed must be at in order to sprout. If that doesn't work, there's always cold stratification, chipping, bashing, soaking in various chemicals and even setting on fire (mainly reserved for the flora of the South African Cape, I believe).
(if you look very closely you'll see the flowers - these are a giveaway clue)
(a bit unfair, really, as this is merely the foliage of a tree, but can you guess which one?)
I'm just happy to be outside again.
Have fun!
No. 1 was the diminutive Cornus sericea 'Kelseyi' - it often seems to be named as 'Kelsey Dwarf' (as it was at this nursery), wrongly I believe. Anyway, it's a twiggy shrub about 60cm high and though not as colourful as its cousins in the dogwood family, it has an almost grass-like effect planted en masse and is quite lovely.
No. 5 many of you realised was a Phormium - but I needed the cultivar. It is in fact Phormium 'Sundowner' - a heady mix of purple, pink and slate-green but one of the nicer of the pinkish phormiums and not quite as garish as many of them seem to be.
To be more precise, it's The Old Croft, a rather lovely garden on Holmwood Common near Dorking which opens under the National Gardens Scheme. We go there every year because they have a fabby swing hanging on very long ropes from their very large and venerable oak (I think) tree which if you get it going fast enough soars thrillingly over the lake. So the girls have a great time and so do I (not on the swing, I hasten to add - far too vertiginous for me). This is the planting in a boggy bit by the lake - they do a lot of this pink-and-orange colour scheme in that bit of the garden, which sounds horrific but is actually stunning in the sunshine. There's a bamboo maze and a hosta garden and... oh... all sorts of things.
I took the photo as part of an attempt to get a magazine to publish an article on it when I first started writing, back in 2006 (my photo folders really need clearing out). Encouraging noises to begin with but then the ed said no in the end. Not sure if it was me or my photos that put her off!
(it's not the obvious cultivar - look closely at the stem colour)
(this shrub was inside the polytunnels and those flower buds open yellow)
You should be able to take a stab at nos 2 and 5 without any help from me. Enjoy!
I was given these lovely things at the Garden Press Day in London last week by those nice people at Taylor's Bulbs. They started opening the very next day and are now flooding my dining room with perfume. The variety is 'Jack the Lad' - and they're cheering me up no end.
Actually I shouldn't have taken it on at all, being as I'm hopelessly overloaded with work already, but when you're offered the chance to garden at a 16th-century house which happens to contain the village museum, and it's got a wisteria on the front that's at least 60 years old, probably older, then I ask you - how can you possibly resist?
Four hours later... this is how it looked. In the end it wasn't too difficult, just time-consuming: I worked my way along all those main branches and took back every side shoot to about 2-3 buds, though I went easy on those which were obviously about to flower so the owner would have a little bit to look forward to this spring. As I said to her, once I've given it its summer pruning too, it'll be back under control, and with luck and a following wind, it'll be smothered in flowers next year. And she'll be able to see out of her windows, too!
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
(clue: it's evergreen, it has those little yellow flowers all winter, and it's a neat little shrub about 2ft tall. )
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