PLANT OF THE WEEK #102 Penstemon ‘Blackbird’
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
I’ve always been in two minds – maybe more than two – in regard to penstemons. Yes, they’re generous in bloom, and yes, they come in a good range of colours.  They flower for an incredibly long time, provided they don’t get too dry.  Indeed they’d likely flower nearly all year in a frost-free temperate climate, with a little summer irrigation. Penstemon ‘Blackbird’ in the foreground, centre and left, in planting at Stone Hill, along with Salvia ‘Caradonna’, Agastache ‘Sweet Lili’, Stipa gigantea and hollyhocks But I just can’t seem to love them.  There’s often too much foliage f ..read more
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Lost, But Happy
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
I spent last week in the second-most remote community on the continent.  Which must make it one of the most remote communities in the world. Besides loving the work I was doing, assisting with an arts project with aboriginal kids, I was totally captivated – mesmerised – by the surrounding landscape and its vegetation.  At a quick glance it looked like there was nothing in bloom, but when I walked right in amongst it all, looking down instead of across, I discovered there was loads in flower. I couldn’t name a single plant.  When I got over the blow to my pride and confidence, I ..read more
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #101: Miscanthus sinensis var. condensatus ‘Cosmopolitan’
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
So there are miscanthuses that fall into a ‘landscape’ category – that look fabulous en masse, or repeated about – and there are ‘novelty’ miscanthuses that should stand alone – that you only need one of.  Miscanthus sinensis var. condensatus ‘Cosmopolitan’ is definitely of the latter category. Miscanthus ‘Cosmopolitan’ (which I’ll call it, from now on) is, without doubt, the best of all the variegated miscanthuses.  Before it emerged about ten years ago, all the other variegated forms, including the captivatingly curious M. ‘Zebrinus’ with striped running across, rather than along ..read more
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #100: Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
One of the great ‘discoveries’ of my unwatered ‘steppe’ garden has been Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’. I’d admired it, from a distance, for several years.  It’s always hard to recall why you overlooked something once you no longer do, but I think it was simply the fact that until I set aside a whole zone for lower growing stuff, I never had a context, in the rough and tumble of a garden based largely on tall perennials, for something below knee height. But after several years of internal nagging about what I was missing out on by insisting on dramatic height, I cooked up a satisfying context for ..read more
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How would your garden perform under the Jane Austen taste test?
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
So while bed-bound with covid last week, I wallowed in some culture and read Jane Austen’s Emma, having heard from a reliable source that it eclipses the better known, and perhaps better loved, Pride and Prejudice. Well into the story, Emma, along with a party of friends, visits Donwell, the house and garden of her neighbour, Mr Knightly. Try as I might, I can’t figure out what could be disputable about the taste on display from an avenue of limes that terminates in a pillared gap through a low stone wall, overlooking a view. Is it the fact that it was a ‘fake’ entrance?  Is it the fact ..read more
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #99: Caryopteris ‘Heavenly Blue’
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
OK, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that today’s Plant of the Week has to be out of season.  Once the last of the autumn leaves blows away in my garden, there’s really nothing to see until the first snowdrops at least six weeks later. There’s one glaring exception – the incredibly obliging Clematis napaulensis, which truly belongs to June and July, but I already wrote about that here (and by the way, if you grow it, go and take a look at it after dark with your phone torch.  The greenish flowers are way more evident under artificial light, for which I can’t offer a single explanatio ..read more
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #98: Helleborus argutifolius
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
It’s a complete mystery to me why, of 100,000+ photos of plants in my photo library, I don’t have a single decent pic of Helleborus argutifolius.  It more than merits tens, if not hundreds of pics. Helleborus argutifolius isn’t like most other hellebores.  It’s the best known of a small group of species known as the caulescent (stemmed) species that grow upright leaf-bearing stems (while in most other species the leaves emerge individually from ground-level, or underground stems), which terminate in a great cluster of flowers.  A pic I had to rip from a book! Unlike the better k ..read more
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Instagram – source of gardening fuel or FOMO?
Michael McCoy
by Michael
1y ago
I sat to down to write this, bar-heater blaring by my legs, overlooking a scene of windswept monochrome bleakness, and turned – just for a few seconds – to instagram.  There I found myself garden-bathing in the early summer floral-overload of the Northern Hemisphere. I confess I hung out there a little longer than I should. Apparently, in the last few days, Delos at Sissinghurst (UK) has been looking particularly good (@sissinghurstcastlegardennt, @troyscottsmith1) and Hermannshof in Germany is kicking ecologically-sound planting goals (@cassianschmidt).  I’ve yet again been wowed by ..read more
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #97: Cupressus sempervirens
Michael McCoy
by Michael
2y ago
If only there were more trees with the emphatic verticality of the Italian cypress. But there aren’t.  The Italian cypress (also known as pencil pine) is a stand alone, in every sense.  It stands straight and tall, at rigid attention, hands clamped to its sides.  It’s the ultimate one-dimensional character, but, as would be wise for all one-dimensional characters, it plays its one trick, or sings its one song, to the absolute full.  The clarity of the vertical line, with crisp outline, as offered by the best (so far) of all forms of this Italian cypress – Cupressus sempervi ..read more
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #96: Elaeagnus x ebbingei
Michael McCoy
by Michael
2y ago
Elaeagnus x ebbingei is a great big brute of a shrub.  At a maximum of about 5m tall by the same wide, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever want to release it into your garden in an untamed form.  But it’s infinitely tamable, and in restrained form is very useful indeed. Its stand-out visual quality is its overall impression of silveriness, and where a large silvery hedge is desired, there’s nothing to match it.  I specify ‘impression of silveriness’, as unlike true silvers like many of the wormwoods, for instance, the source of the silver quality of Elaeagnus x ebbingei becomes less ..read more
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