Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

All of the flowers posted here over the last couple of weeks have been white. I wondered why that was…perhaps it’s because I’m attracted by the idea of something that looks cool. Given this summer’s weather, that seems very likely.

These lilies looked fresh and elegant, but do you see that little bit of red right at the top of the second photo? A lily beetle. Some of these lilies were actually quite ravaged by the hungry little horrors, and I’ve had to crop in close to hide the damage. (Luckily for me, these aren’t in my own garden. I don’t grow any lilies, which means I don’t have to worry about lily beetles either.)

The idea of planting a garden to look cool and refreshing in the summer heat has lately become an especially appealing one. Sadly, though, many of our plants look tired and frazzled instead. Some won’t make it through this year.

Other plants have surprised me by doing well despite the lack of water, especially gaura (Oenothera, to give it it’s new name), Perovskia, Verbena bonariensis and various asters that seem unaffected so far. Geranium ‘Rozanne’ has been a mass of flower for weeks, although some leaves are now starting to show hints of red. It has been a relief to see it looking OK because I thought I’d planted it in a position that may be too hot and dry for it.

It’s likely that our future gardens will look different as we choose plants that are more tolerant of drought and heat. Will we also look for plants that have a cooler look? (I am happy not to have much red or orange in the garden this year.) The idea of a border full of white and blue flowers certainly has an appeal during this hot weather! ☀

The Californian tree poppy (Romneya coulteri, also called the Matilija poppy) is a spectacle that I enjoy seeing every summer. If I had a larger garden I’d be tempted to grow it, but my garden isn’t very big. (Despite how it may sound when I talk about all the plants I try to shoe-horn into it!)

Romneya flowers are up to 8 inches across and, on a plant that grows up to around 7 feet high, they make a stunning display. Their tissue-light, crinkly petals have an airy, almost fly-away look, as if they’re only held down by the mass of golden stamens at their centre. Against a background of their own glaucous leaves, the flowers look cool and delightful on a hot summer day.

It’s probably a good thing that I know my garden isn’t big enough to accommodate the Californian tree poppy, because these plants can spread invasively once established. I’ve read of them sending up shoots long distances from the plant itself and the rhizomes can spread under patios and garden buildings…not ideal unless you have a lot of space!

I’m glad I managed to photograph these frilly blooms in the middle of last month. The plant had been in flower for what felt like a long time, but every one had gone when I visited a couple of days ago. So I will have a long wait before I see these beauties again!

The daisies here made me smile when I saw them, with their wild and twisty petals and their cheerful yellow centres. My own garden is full of different daisies and this is one that I would consider adding. It’s a shasta daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum), loved by many gardeners and one of an ever-growing number of cultivars.

I don’t know what this particular cultivar is, since it is in someone else’s garden. There are several possiblities with similar petals, ‘Shaggy Gem’, ‘Old Court’ or ‘Beauté Nivelloise’. Another cultivar, named ‘Crazy Daisy’, often has more double flowers than you see here, with even twistier petals. ( However, I’m less keen on the more double-flowered forms and they’re less accessible to pollinators too.)

Leucanthemum cultivars can be variable when grown from seed, so they are usually propagated vegetatively. To grow one like this, it would best to look for a similar-looking individual plant rather than buying seeds. (Although seeds could be interesting if there was space to grow lots of different seedlings to see how they might turn out.)

There are already a couple of varieties of shasta daisy in our garden. We have the ‘normal’ white daisy with regular petals and a pale yellow cultivar called ‘Broadway Lights’, which gradually fades towards cream as the flowers mature. Recently I also planted the related wild oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare, in the hope that it will seed itself around a little. The quirky and very charming daisy in my photos would look right at home here. (And it’s good for wildlife too. Did you notice the silvery spider in the top photo and the tiny bee in the bottom photo?)

Berkheya purpurea (purple berkheya) is another of the plants that I’ve come across for the first time at Fullers Mill. They were an unusual sight…pale silvery-mauve flowers on strong, very prickly stems. I didn’t get that close a look at them because they were planted well-behind other large plants in an inaccessible area.

It looked as if the placing of this plant was deliberately out of the way of visitors. When you see just how spiky it is, you realise that a close encounter could be very painful. The spines along the stems, leaves, and even on the bracts at the back of each flower, look quite vicious and certainly not to be messed with.

The attractive flowers are very large daisies with a dark purple centre. (Some describe them as being like a small purple sunflower). Like other members of the Asteraceae family, the flowers are a magnet for bees, butterflies, and hoverflies. Berkheya comes from South Africa and can cope with drought, but is still reasonably hardy. (It doesn’t like winter wet though, so would need an area that drains well when its rainy.)

Berkheya looks quite stunning, with its contrast between the architectural stems and the delicately pretty flowers. It could be a useful deterrent to help protect the security of your home, since nobody is going to attempt to wade through a thicket of this spiky plant. But those ferocious spikes would put me off growing it, so it’s not a choice for me. I like to be able to know I can work in my garden without being injured by my plants!

Now is a good stage of the summer to admire the beautiful flowers of both lilies and daylilies. This week I’ve posted some of the daylilies that have taken my fancy with their gorgeous colours. The colours I’ve seen range from the palest cream, to yellows, oranges, the deepest reds, soft pinks and pinkish purple.

Like true lilies (Lilium species), daylilies (Hemerocallis) can be fatally toxic to cats, so I’ve never tried to grow them. Even now, when I no longer have cats of my own, I prefer to know that my garden is a safe space for any feline visitors, but I do enjoy seeing these beauties in other gardens.

Some daylily colours do not appeal to me. (I don’t really like some of the bicoloured cultivars, or the harsher oranges). These, however, all captivated me and made me reach for my camera. The dazzling yellow and the dramatically dark red of the flowers in the top two photographs were spellbinding. They would make spectacular focal points in a garden border.

If I was choosing plants for my own garden, I’d prefer the softer, but quite luscious colours of the second two. The intensity of that pink and the depth of the magenta-purple make the flowers most alluring and they’d fit in well with the other plants here. But, for the sake of my cat visitors, I don’t intend to grow them…I’ll just enjoy them when I see them elsewhere.

Today I’m posting more photos of flowers that I’ve only ever seen at Fullers Mill. (There are lots of plants that I’ve seen for the first time there.) This plant is Galactites tomentosus, also known as purple milk thistle. The ‘purple’ in the common name is essential to avoid confusion with Silybum marianum, the plant more usually known by the name ‘milk thistle’.

Galactites tomentosus is an annual or biennial, depending on the growing conditions. It grows wild around the Mediterranean and, as you would expect, prefers sun and well-drained soil. Grown for the look of both its flowers and leaves, the seeds of this attractive thistle and a very striking white form (‘Alba’) are easily available online.

Like Silybum marianum, this thistle has green leaves that are strongly marked with white, giving it its common name. Last October I photographed the basal rosette of leaves of a young plant. These leaves persist through the winter, adding interest to gardens at a quiet time. (Although I have seen varying statements of its hardiness, some suggesting that it is fully hardy, and others saying that the leaves may die back in a severe winter.) The very prickly young plants that I saw last autumn will be amongst those that are in flower now.

It’s not just the leaves that are prickly; the photo below shows the spines on the buds and the outer bracts that surround the flowers. What a contrast to the soft appearance of the pinky-purple flowers and the downy fluff of the seeds! The plant adds a touch of drama to a border…but I’d reckon on even more drama if a gardener happens to get spiked on it while weeding nearby. Ouch!

That slight risk will be worth it for wildlife gardeners though. When I photographed it, I noticed that the flowers were very busy with bumblebees. Galactites attracts other pollinators too, including hoverflies, butterflies and moths. Later in the year, the seeds are eaten by goldfinches. It’s not just pretty, or prickly, but very useful too.

On my frequent visits to Fullers Mill Garden (near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk) I often see unfamiliar plants. The flower above caught my attention as something that I hadn’t seen before. It belongs to a Calycanthus, a shrub also known as Carolina allspice or sweetshrub.

The flowers look very different to anything I’ve seen on a shrub before. The first time I saw one was on a very still day. The flower was a softly faded deep rose and its petals (actually tepals) seemed rigid and sturdy, and somehow rather unreal in the stillness. At first glance that flower almost had the look of being finely carved out of wood. A strange impression, and one that I didn’t get when I saw them this year, as a lively breeze made sure that everything was in frequent movement.

That breeze means I cannot tell you what the scent was like. I think I missed out there! Sweetshrub is known for its fruity scent, described by the RHS as ‘combining hints of pineapple, strawberry and banana’. Next time I’ll need to have a good sniff at the flowers. (Actually, this looks like it may be either Calycanthus ‘Aphrodite’ or C. ‘Hartlage Wine’, both of which are said to also have scent from the leaves and bark…even more to have a good sniff at.)

As you can see from the photo below, the leaves are large in comparison to the flowers. Calycanthus are big shrubs, which can reach a height and spread of 3M or more…a bit much for my over-stuffed garden. So I may not have the space to grow one, but I know where to go to enjoy those magenta-plum flowers, and, if I’m lucky, perhaps the scent too.

The brightly-coloured flowers shown here are Welsh poppies (Papaver cambricum, formerly known as Meconopsis cambrica). Their citrus-coloured orange and yellow tones brought a touch of liveliness to an otherwise green and quiet spot in a mix of sunshine and partial shade.

These perennial poppies are native to Wales, parts of the west of England and some areas of Western Europe. They are widely planted in gardens too. I grew the yellow one in my previous garden in Scotland, where it was suited to the generally moist soil. They can spread themselves around a lot from seed. However, I was usually happy to see them popping up when they brightened up the cooler, shady areas of that garden.

The Welsh poppy is a plant that I wouldn’t try to grow in my present garden, because the drier and hotter conditions here wouldn’t suit it. Instead I’d go for one of the other Papaver species that are more likely to cope with a very well-drained soil. Wild Papaver rhoeas, the annual field poppy, seeds itself around my garden, so one of its cultivars would probably do well. There’s the lovely P. rhoeas ‘Pandora’, whose petals are a mix of deep and rosy red, striped with a soft grey. Then there’s the delicate pastels or deeper colours of the Shirley poppy, and the very tempting silvery-blue shades of P. rhoeas ‘Amazing Grey’.

Another poppy that I’ll probably try is the gorgeous plum-purple Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’, which would look right at home amongst the other deep purple shades in my garden. (I’d like to see it contrasted with plants that have silvery leaves to add a dash of drama to a border.)

Other poppies that cope with dry conditions include the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) – I see the annual orange flowers reappear every year as they seed themselves around a nearby garden. In the past I’ve grown a rosy-red cultivar called ‘Carmine King’ and it’s one that I’ll sow again. It’s one of many poppies that should do well here, so, happily, I have plenty to choose from.

I haven’t seen white asphodel for years, perhaps because it’s not easily available to buy in UK garden centres. That seems a pity to me, because it likes sunny, well-drained sites, so would do well around here. (If I’m honest, I have to admit that I’d forgotten about this plant until I came across it at Fullers Mill recently.)

The white, star-shaped flowers, each petal with its central brown pinstripe, are most attractive. They’re a bit like a camassia in form, but the flowers last for longer. White asphodel (Asphodelus albus) is a native Mediterranean plant that can flower from late spring into June and July.

Many years ago I did try growing asphodel in my garden in Scotland. I had great hopes of being able to take lots of photographs of these unusually-marked flowers. Sadly, it was not to be, because the plant didn’t survive its first winter. It’s said to be hardy down to between -5°C and -10°C, so probably wasn’t killed by winter cold. The soil in our Scottish garden was fairly heavy clay and could get quite wet in winter, so I think it’s more likely that the roots simply rotted.

It’s a plant that would probably be very happy growing in this garden, so I could try growing it again here. If you’re tempted to try it too, just be aware that it is somewhat toxic to both humans and animals, so might not be a good choice if you have little children or pets that are inclined to put things in their mouths. (That’s true of a surprising number of garden plants!) Now I shall be on the lookout for these delightfully striped flowers again…

The brown pinstripe adds to the good looks of the flowers and buds of white asphodel.