A distinctive Japanese sedge with arching green leaves. Carex oshimensis 'Evergreen' is beautiful in a pot as well as making a dense groundcover. It will grow in a difficult courtyard and small city garden if well irrigated.
Caryopteris are tough drought tolerant deciduous shrubs which, happily for us, flower for a long time during late summer and autumn. ‘Lisaura’ is the best of the gold leaf forms.
Smothered in deep rose flowers, each petal having a maroon blotch, during late spring and early summer this tough evergreen shrub is hardy to hot summers, frosty winters and drought when once established. Happy in any sunny well drained spot. 120cm by 120cm.
Named “sweet” because of its wonderful honey fragrance. We grow it on a trellis in our double borders where, although cut back to 60cm during winter, it covers an area about 2 metres in height and 4-5 metres in width.
I was one of the first Australians to see a blue Corydalis when I visited the Edinburg Botanica gardens 40 years ago. Corydalis reflexa was so rare that the gardens had it under lock and key in a no go area in the gardens.
One of the best shrubs for “...its dazzling autumn colour” writes G.S. Thomas in his seminal book “Ornamental Shrubs, Climbers and Bamboos”. ‘Flame’ has been given the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society.
A compact growing broom, sometimes sold as C. ‘Volcano’, with rich dark green leaves and dark green vertical stems. During spring and early summer C. ‘Lena’ is smothered with pea shaped flowers, ruby red and yellow. This is a fine small shrub for hot dry positions.
One of the showiest of all spring flowering shrubs the Warminster Broom was given the coveted RHS Award of Garden Merit as long ago as 1933. It first cropped up in an English garden in 1867.
