Gardening at Longmeadow by Don Monty

Author:Don, Monty [Don, Monty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448140503
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2012-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

That was over ten years ago, and this year we completely renewed our stock of plants in this damp area as it had become rather wild, tired and overgrown (which sounds more like the description of an errant rock star than a garden).

I have added three types of ligularia: Ligularia przewalskii; L. ‘The Rocket’; and L. dentata ‘Desdemona’. Przewalskii is a mouthful for the English-speaking tongue but a joy in any language. It has deeply cut leaves and a 2m (6ft) tall flower spike (on a mature plant) that is almost black and which carries a brilliant spire of small yellow flowers from June onwards for weeks. It looks best when threaded through the border like a wonderfully dramatic wildflower in tall grass. ‘The Rocket’ also has a tall black flower stem carrying a conical torch of small yellow flowers, although these are individually rather larger than its ‘Polish’ cousin and it has heart-shaped leaves with ragged, serrated edges. (Przewalskii is not Polish at all but a native of damp meadows in north-west China). However both work well together, harmonising on the same theme.

‘Desdemona’ is also native to China and Japan. I have previously grown L. d. ‘Othello’, which shares the family’s superb foliage with green upper surfaces and rich cardinal-purple undersides carried on plum-red stalks that reveal themselves with every breath of wind as it catches and twists the leaves. Their flowers are the colour of orange peel with petals like chunky daisies. Their only fault is that they are slower-growing than taller ligularias and can be prone to slug attack during the first month they emerge in spring, so need extra protection and care at that time.

This kind of planting, taking one kind of flower and then varying that theme with hybrids and species, nearly always looks good and provides an inbuilt harmony to a border, even if the individual plants vary quite noticeably. This is as much to do with the fact that if one of them is happy in that position then the others are almost certainly bound to thrive there too and in my experience, a happy plant is also a beautiful plant and most certainly leads to a happy gardener.

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