Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

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Clematis are amongst my favourite flowers – probably pretty close to the top of the list. The large-flowered varieties are sumptuous, with rich colours and beautiful flower forms. I’m always tempted to grow more of these wonderful plants. But the smaller-flowered cultivars are just as appealing. They may also be easier to fit into a wide variety of garden styles.

The large-flowered clematis can sometimes feel too showy for a more naturalistic planting style, or in a wilder part of a garden. Here the smaller-flowered clematis may be easier to use, sitting more comfortably with simpler, less highly-bred flowers. I can easily imagine the lovely little clematis in my top photograph growing through shrubs in my own garden. (I’d need to find out what it is first. This is a plant I saw in a garden I visited this year, as is the pink clematis below.)

The pink clematis would need a bit of thought about positioning because it is such an eye-catching colour. It is very elegant, though, and wouldn’t look out of place in an informal planting. The deep blue/purple clematis below would probably look good almost anywhere. This one is ‘Sapphire Indigo’, bought many years ago at a plant fair. I haven’t seen it for sale anywhere since (although it is available online), which surprises me. It’s a lovely plant which sprawls rather than climbs, so I prop it up by leaning it against the branches of nearby shrubs. I should try to propagate it because I’d love to have more of it around the garden.

The last clematis in this little gathering is ‘Lansdowne Gem’, which flowers in wintertime. It got thoroughly frosted last winter, which worried me a bit because I wasn’t sure if it would be hardy enough to cope with a long cold period. It does appear to have survived though, because I can see some new shoots appearing now. (Mine goes dormant in the heat of summer, so only starts to show signs of life around this time.) This is a pretty clematis, with dark red, occasionally speckled, flowers that are like little bells hanging down from the shrubs it climbs. Its flowers are something cheering to look forward to in the depths of winter.

(You can see more pictures in my post about ‘Lansdowne Gem’ here.)

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Officially it’s autumn, but summer is determined to cling on here. Temperatures are breaking records for this time of year (over 30C for several days). So it feels appropriate to post a collection of bold yellows this week, a colour that makes me think of a child’s drawing of the sun.

The yellow lily demanded my attention as it gleamed in the sunlight and flaunted its brilliant colour against a dark background. It, and most of the other flowers here, were photographed during garden visits. (This spectacular lily was photographed at Fullers Mill, which I have posted about several times: here, another here, and again here.)

The helenium (above, right) and the Anthemis daisies (below) were also photographed in other people’s gardens. I’ve visited a lot of gardens this year, making up for previous years when Covid caused the cancellation of many garden-openings. It has been a lot of fun and a great way to see plants I don’t grow here, many new to me.

The evening primrose shown above is the one flower here that was photographed in my own garden. It is Oenothera macrocarpa (Missouri evening primrose, bigfruit evening primrose), a low-growing perennial that sprawls happily in the dry soil here. The flowers of this evening primrose are a bit darker and a more lemony yellow than the taller evening primroses that also grow well here. Their flowers are larger too, opening in the afternoon and persisting well into the next morning before fading.

The last plant in this post, Anthemis tinctoria, is one that also grows in my own garden. Mine, however, is ‘E.C. Buxton’, which has much paler petals (actually ray florets). I don’t know what the cultivar in the photo here is, but I was impressed by the richness of its colour. Just the thing for a post inspired by sunshine!

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There are a couple of white astrantias in my own garden which are very pretty and delicate-looking. Lovely as they are, they don’t have the sultry and rather dramatic good looks of this astrantia, photographed in a garden I visited recently.

I don’t know the name of this particular astrantia cultivar. A quick look around with Google has shown me that there are now many cultivars in a range of pink, red and burgundy shades. All are stunningly beautiful, so you can imagine how tempted I am by them…nothing surprising there, hehe!

Fortunately for me, they don’t take up a huge amount of space, so I should be able to fit one or two in here. (But they do prefer a more moisture-retentive soil than we have, so a good addition of compost would be necessary first.)

Dark flowers and foliage have a strong appeal for me. They help to prevent borders from looking a bit too sweet and add a suggestion of mystery and moody allure. My only problem will be deciding which of the dark astrantias to go for!

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From year to year, many of the flowers in my garden are the same. Most are perennials, but there are also the annual and biennial self-seeders that have become established here. So each season has a familiar look, with perhaps a few recent additions or a few losses.

Something did manage to surprise me this summer – the unusually enlarged flower head of the wild carrot (Daucus carota) pictured above. This is the mixed deep-red to white variety ‘Dara’, which I sowed a few years ago. A biennial, it has been self-seeding here ever since. The shape of this particular flower has gone very much awry, perhaps due to disease or an attack by an insect.

The flower should be a simple umbel (a shape like the frame of an upturned umbrella), like the one shown below. If you look at the structure of it, you’ll see that the ‘umbrella frame’ of stems each end in a similar structure, but in miniature. (These are known as ‘umbellules’ or ‘umbellets’ and make up a ‘compound umbel’.) The normal flower in the picture below is in the process of opening into the flatter shape of the maturing flower head.

So what has happened to produce the strange flower head here? Somehow it has produced an extra ring of smaller umbels around the central umbel. Each of these has then gained a ring of umbellules on longer stems than usual, giving the appearance of being surrounded by tiny satellites. It is as if the instruction for growing into a normal flower have become corrupted and caused repeats in the flower’s structure. Whatever the cause, I’m intrigued by this flower and I’m wondering how it will develop. What will happen when it tries to fold into the ‘nest’ shape that the seed-heads normally become? If it survives long enough, I’ll let you know what happens… 🙂

You can see more pictures of how wild carrot normally looks and develops here.