Wednesday 13 June 2007

The Brown House Garden - June


Looking eastward, the wall is lower than on the other sides of the garden, where they are all about 18 feet high. Living up to her name, Maigold is a reliable May-flowerer here and goes on looking fresh and vigorous for weeks and weeks. Growing alongside is an old Rosa rugosa, skirted by catmint. All these plants do remarkably well, considering the amount of shade they get in the morning from a vast sycamore.

Here is Echium pininana 'Pink Fountain', also known as Tower of Jewels and Pride of Teneriffe. This was its first flowering here, after succumbing to winter weather for several years. A real show-stopper for visitors to the garden this year!

Earlier in the season, when it became clear that the echium really was, finally, going to flower, Tim explained some of its botanical properties to Sam, who was most interested.

2 comments:

Atticus said...

Delightful, Celia. Thank you. We brought an Echium back from Cornwall a few weeks ago. We bought it for £1.50 from a roadside stall with a trust moneybox! I think it's probably (one of?) the blue flowering variety, however, and doubtless rather common. It remains to be seen if it is hardy enough to survive our Kentish winters but we remain optimistic because quite near us stands a magnificent, 3-stem specimen.

Celia said...

Atticus, Please keep me informed about the progress of your plant. Interested to hear how hardy it turns out to be in your area as we reckon our conditions are fairly benign but, as I said, have only got it to flower this year.

When I was in St.Mawes last August all the gardens were full of the stately stems of gone-over echiums - must be a stunning sight when they're in full flower.