Purple Wellies

With milder winters, Salvias have perhaps become more popular in the last few years. One Salvia that should be on every collectors list is S. bulleyana, a true connoisseurs plant. There is some confusion over the naming of this, so you might find it listed under S. flava megalantha. It also grows by a trade name of ‘Blue Lips’.

A fantastic hardy member of the ginger family, this group of tuberous perennials with their orchid resembling flowers appear between May and August and some varieties , when a sizable clump, can carry on flowering for up to eight weeks.

My husband and I, well more me really, as he is never that keen, have opened our garden previously for our local village garden safari raising money for the village hall. We’ve done this about four times. I’ve always thought what would it be like to open for the Yellow Book (National Garden Scheme) and had always assumed one day I would contact them when I believed our garden could warrant people spending 45 minutes perusing and critiquing the borders!

Last year I purchased two varieties of hardy Impatiens to help prolong the season of interest from summer into autumn in our garden. Impatiens, like many plants, have got themselves a bad reputation. Impatiens glandulifera, or Himalayan balsalm  has become a nuisance along riverbanks and on waste ground with its exploding seed pods.

If you are a lover of ferns, but find your garden is too sunny and dry for them, then maybe you need to explore this genus a little deeper. Ferns are an incredibly large and diverse group of plants, having colonised nearly every continent on the planet.