Bergenias: from disdain to esteem

I came to Bergenias rather late in life, although my first contact with them was [...]

Agastache Sweet Lili

One of the finest perennials for the hot, summer dry Mediterranean climate areas of Australia [...]

A Tale of Four Roses

We have an old water tank sitting on top of a 10-metre-tall iron stand. When [...]

Hostas

It was around fifty years ago when I first visited Pirianda Gardens. At that time, [...]

Paulownia

I saw my first Paulownia soon after arriving in Melbourne sixty years ago. I spent [...]

Chrysanthemums

Viburnum opulus

Whilst wandering around the garden looking for flowers to decorate the house last Christmas Criss [...]

The Crown of Thorns

A few years before the covid pandemic the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Philip Freier, [...]

A Distinguished Visitor

Last Sunday, the 8th of September, I had a visit from a horticultural national living [...]

Stachyurus praecox

Narcissus ‘Beryl’

There are daffodils and there are daffodils. Some are so superior to the run-of-the-mill sorts [...]

Alstroemeria – The Peruvian Lilies

I met my first Alstroemerias when working for Boulter’s Nursery in Olinda in the 1960s. [...]

Violets

Walking into one of our large growing houses today I almost swooned from the intense [...]

Bluebells

There is, or used to be, a bluebell wood a short walk from my East [...]

Houseleeks

When I was a lad, some seventy-five years ago, my village, like much of the [...]

Shade Lovers from Chile

I first saw plants of Bridal Wreath, Francoa appendiculata ssp. ramosa, some fifty years ago [...]

Snowdrops (Galanthus)

Snowdrops (Galanthus) have naturalised so far and wide in the British Isles that they are [...]

Forsythia ‘Gold Clusters’ (syn Forsythia ‘Melee d’Or’)

Seventy years ago, when I was 8 years old, my father let me use a [...]

Lambley History at ‘Burnside’, Ascot