The national pelargonium collection 2/2

This is the second part of a long blog post. Please click here to read Part 1.

Pelargonium 'Shannon', hybridissed in Califonia by Jay Kapac

Crossing two species results in a species (or primary) hybrid. This category contains two of my absolute favourite pelargoniums, Pelargonium'Shannon', which I’ve waffled on about before (here). It’s quite a relaxed, almost straggly plant, with bright green foliage and small flowers of a colour often described as salmon pink, although I think the pink is a shade or two cooler than that would suggest. The markings in a deeper pink at the base of each petal are quite a feature. A great choice for containers.

Pelargonium 'Ardens'.

Another species hybrid is the very beautiful Pelargonium 'Ardens'. This latter plant, a cross between Pelargonium lobatum and Pelargonium fulgidum, has particularly long flower stems (peduncles), at the end of which are blooms of the richest deep red with brown markings. It’s quite exquisite, the flowers giving the impression of just managing to contain some inner, burning flame. I first came across it only a few months ago in a feature in July’s Gardens Illustrated (no. 211 – worth getting hold of a copy), and was more than delighted to make its acquaintance in person.

The long peduncles of Pelargonium 'Ardens'.

Container planting with P. 'Ardens', Gardens Illustrated no. 211

The next group I was interested to spend some more time was the Stellar, or ‘Five Fingered Zonal’ pelargoniums – I was even fortunate enough  to catch most of these in flower, allowing me to appreicate some of the most interesting petals, in terms of both shape and colour, complementing some superb foliage. There’s something about these plants which I find particularly dynamic; showy, but without (for the most part) wandering beyond the realms of good taste. Do let me know if you agree by leaving a comment below!

Pelargonium 'Aaron West'

Pelargonium 'Aaron West'. This has a striking flower, with long, thin white petals of equal size and distribution, each kinked like a bolt of lightning. A generous flecking of pink along the inner length of each petal completes the look – a sumptuos flower. The foliage has zonal markings and the typically five-fingered palmate form of the stellar pelargoniums.

Pelargonium 'Annsbrook Jupiter'

The petals of Pelargonium 'Annsbrook Jupiter' are neither as long nor as thin as P. 'Aaron West', although the colouring is similar, if a little more subtle with the pink flecking.

Pelargonium 'Vectis Volcano'

For the ultimate in flecking, there is Pelargonium 'Vectis Volcano', whose white petals (two smaller upper, three larger lower) appears to have been treated to a generous dusting with paprika.

Pelargonium 'Miss McKenzie'

But it wasn’t just the flowers that caught my eye here. The leaves of, for example, Pelargonium 'Miss McKenzie' are divided between the lobes, or fingers, to the extent that the fingers seem splayed out in an exaggerated fashion. These are real jazz hands.

Pelargonium 'Lotus Land'

The golden foliage of Pelargonium 'Lotus Land', contrasting with the bright pink of the flowers, reminds me of nothing so much as the leaves of the serenely beautiful Golden full moon maple, Acer shirasawanum 'Aureum'. I can’t help but wonder what they might look like in a planting together – hideous, possibly, and certainly not an authentic combination, but I’ll probably have to try it just to see for myself.

Golden acers in Kazyuyuki Ishihara’s Togenkyo Artisan Garden at Chelsea earlier this yeara

At this point in my visit, I was waylaid by a grouping of plants – the miniature zonal pelargoniums – how fantastic! Pocket sized, perfectly formed zonal pellies, with as great a variety of foliage and flower colour and form as their larger cousins. Growing to no more than 12 cm high, these are the perfect plants for a small window ledge, and so, several more names were added to my now immensely long shopping list of plants for the spring. Here are just a few.

Pelargonium 'Garnet Rosebud'

Pelargonium 'Gwen'

Pelargonium 'Red Spider'

Pelargonium 'Mini Czech'

Tearing myself away from these diminutive delights, I managed to find the area containing the scented-leaved pelargoniums, where ensued much rubbing of foliage and sniffing. The range of aromas includes fresh, minty and eucalpytus, invigorating citruses and rich, and more mellow scents of rose and spices. By this time, my poor nervous system was approaching sensory overload, but I managed to postpone turning into a gibbering wreck for just long enough to take a few more photographs.

Pelargonium 'Chocolate Peppermint'

I found one of the plants on my wish list, Pelargonium 'Chocolate Peppermint', which I recognised by its distinctive, oak-shaped leaves with dark brown central markings. I hadn’t been expecting the individual leaves to be quite so large, however – nor so soft and delicate. Quite a surprise; I’m now even more enthusiastic to add this to my collection, although quite where all these new plants are going to go in my house I’ve yet to work out. We don’t even have window ledges.

Pelargonium 'Annsbrooke Beauty'

This photograph shows a specimen I didn’t have on my list, but as is so often the case, meeting the plant in person gives an entirely different impression, and I have a feeling that the lemon scented 'Annsbrooke Beauty' will soon be coming to stay. There’s something very well matched about the way the bicolour markings on the petals mirror the variagation on the handsome foliage.

Finally, a bench containing some fine ivy-leaved pelargoniums. These trailing plants are fabulous, they flower for an age and the foliage is rich and glossy.

I was particularly taken with the tactile, succulent foliage of 'Flakey', a dwarf trailing variety...

Pelargonium 'Flakey'

...and I will definitely be growing the considerably larger and more vigorous Pelargonium 'Chuan Cho' next year.

Pelargonium 'Chuan Cho'

And that should have been it for this visit. However, even as I was walking back to the car, I couldn’t stop myself from sticking my head into another glasshouse, where I found another two plants which demand to be added to my small collection of dark flowered regals (at present comprising 'Lord Bute', 'Mystery' and 'Regalia Chocolate').

Pelargonium 'Garland'

Pelargonium 'Rimfire'

In all, it was a fascinating few hours spent with some truly wonderful plants, and the opporunity to see such a comprehensive collection is one not to be missed – even if, like me, you leave it till September. I would urge anyone with an interest in this genus to make the trip, especially if you’re in the area anyway visiting Stratford-upon-Avon or one of the many famous gardens in this part of the country (among them Waterperry, Rousham, Kiftsgate, Hidcote and Buscot Park, not to mention the pottery at Whichford). For me, though, the draw of the nursery and the National Pelargonium Collection was sufficient to entice me out of Kentish parts, and I’d like to thank Heather and the staff at Fibrex for accommodating my curiosity, putting up with a nosey visitor and making the trip so worthwhile. I’ll certainly be back next year.

The national pelargonium collection 1/2

To Fibrex Nurseries today, the home of a the national pelargonium collection, which I’ve been intending to visit for some time. It could be argued that it’s a bit late in the year to visit a collection comprising largely summer flowering perennials but, like most people, I’m at the mercy of my diary and today was the first opportunity in a long while that I’ve had to make the trip. To tell the truth, it wasn’t a source of bother to me; I’m such an enthusiastic fan of this particular genus that the foliage and the growth habit of the individual specimens promised to hold as much fascination for me as the flowers – more, if I’m honest.

One of the last orders to go out this year. Fibrex will begin despatching pelargoniums again in March

Fibrex is a family run nursery, nestled in the beautiful Warwickshire countryside. As well as the pelargoniums they are home to the national hedera collection and additionaly specialise in ferns and begonias. Maintaining a strong presence at the horticultural shows run by the RHS and other organisations throughout the year, and a wall in the office entirely covered with awards provides ample testimony to their enviable success and skill. Earlier in the year I’d met Heather Godard-Key at a couple of the RHS shows in London, and we’ve since spoken on twitter. She kindly agreed to show me around the nursery and, within moments of greeting me as I extracted myself from the car, had furnished me with a welcome cup of tea and a slice of pelargonium cake. It might be three and half hours from home, but this alone was worth the journey.

Pellie cake, which was worth the journey in itself

Pelargoniums hail mainly from South Africa, with a few species having been discovered in East Africa, Australia and the Middle East. They were originally classified alongside geraniums, with which they share some features, but due to significant differences* have been considered a distinct genus since the late eighteenth century. Notwithstanding this fact, the general public and even certain seed companies (who really ought to know better) still refer to 'geraniums' when talking of pelargoniums. This is particularly so with the ever-popular zonal varieties, and is one of those things that will make a horticulturalist wince; in fact, a rather dangerous look comes over Heather’s face when our conversation turns to this confusion, and so I choose not to dwell on it.

Heather reminds me that here you only get to refer to 'geraniums' once...

Suffice it to say that there are many pelargonium cultivars, providing an attractive, colourful and easy to grow solution for the garden and conservatory. Often with scented foliage, the majority are tender and evergreen, requiring protection throughout the winter, and as such they make excellent container plants. Cultivars appropriate for many situations fall into useful categories – zonal, regal, angel, stellar, ivy-leaved, scented etc – and the collection is laid out according to these groups, all clearly labelled and with helpful notes to guide the enthusiast through the 2,500 plus plants on show.

With so much to see, I knew before arriving that I had no hope of taking everything in. On this visit, although quite prepared to be waylaid by interesting specimens along the way, I had decided to concentrate on the species section, whilst also indulging my curiosity with the scented leaved and stellar varieties. Here is just a small sample of the wonderful pelargoniums I met today.

Pelargonium triste. Photograph © Heather Godard-Key

Pelargonium triste   Noted for its strong evening scent, this is the earliest species to be brought into cultivation in the seventeenth century. The tactile leaves are hairy and deeply divided, rather like those of a carrot or some other umbelliferous thing. The flowers are variable, dull yellow to purple, though I think this one is rather splendid.

Pelargonium abrotainifolium

Pelargonium abrotainifolium  I was completely won over by these small, highly textured, blue grey leaves and the reddish brown, loosely unkempt stems. Gorgeous dark cerise markings on the white upper petals.

Pelargonium exstipulatum

Pelargonium exstipulatum  Like Pelargonium abrotanifolium above, this shares small, glaucus, kidney-shaped (reniform) leaves with one of my favourites, Pelargonium sidoides, and also with Pelargonium reniforme.

Pelargonium gibbosum

Pelargonium gibbosum  Yellowy, almost green flowers, fabulous! Known as the ‘gouty’ pelargonium due to swollen nodes, which gives it its latin name.

Pelargonium tricuspidatum

Pelargonium tricuspidatum

Pelargonium tricuspidatum  There is so much variety in leaf form amongst these species plants, this one took me by surprise!

Pelargonium glutinosum

Pelargonium glutinosum  Talking of leaves, these are rather handsome ones, albeit sticky. A shrubby pelargonium growing to over a metre tall.

Pelargonium denticulatum

Pelargonium denticulatum  Another large, shrubby plant, with fabulous foliage (also somewhat tacky)! Precisely defined, deeply cut leaves – although another form, Filicifolium, takes it even further.

Before we leave the species, I wanted to share two final discoveries. First, the diminutive, glossy-leaved Pelargonium saxifragoides...

Pelargonium saxifragoides

... and finally, the mother of all ivy-leaved forms, Pelargonium peltatum, named after the peltate (shield shaped) leaves in which the stalk attached towards the centre of the leaf, rather than at the outer margin. It may not be the most attractive trailing pelargonium, but its always interesting to see the parents of the more showy cultivars.

Pelargonium peltatum

Part 2 of  this post can be read here. 

Fibrex Nurseries can be found on the web here, and on Twitter @FibrexNurseries 


*the differences are complex, but as an example, flowers of the genus Geranium will have five equally sized petals, arranged regularly around the centre, and ten fertile stamens, whereas a Pelargonium flower will typically have two larger upper petals, three smaller lower petals, with fewer than ten fertile stamens. Confusingly, the petals of the zonal cultivars, probably the most commonly seen pellie, have been bred to be even in shape, size, and arrangement. Which only goes to show what a minefield taxonomy can be.

Covered in bees*

The alliterative first line of Keats’ ode To Autumn gets bandied about with predicatable regularity at this time of year. And quite rightly too; it may be bordering upon cliché, but were there a more apt, evocative or economic description of the time of year now being ushered in than “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, I’m sure we’d all be using it. But, for the past week or so, it’s the passage at the end of the first stanza that I keep thinking of, those lines that describe the bees making the absolute most of the late-season flowers, drunk on nectar and basking in the late sun before returning to hives dripping with honey after the summer’s generosity.



This mental picture seems particularly apposite just now. The radio tells me we’re enjoying the driest September since 1960, while my ears tell me that the bees are certainly taking advantage of the weather. When out walking Bill in the fields I pass between two ivy-clad columns – heaven only knows what trees are providing the structural support, the climber is all-encompassing and glossy with luxuriant mature foliage, in full flower and cacophanous with all manner of flying insects. I identify wasps, several kinds of bee and hover flies among the cloud of voracious activity, before deciding to retreat to a safer distance. They all look perfectly preoccupied, but the sound is slightly intimidating, and I don’t really fancy hanging around in case the general mood should suddenly change.

Back in the garden, the dahlias continue to romp away in the borders, the asters are coming into flower and, while most of the lavender has now been cut back, there are a few patches which we’ve deliberately left. All of these late flowers seem to be enormously appreciated by the bees, our most welcome neighbours, and in a year when the plight of the bumble bee continues to be a serious concern, their presence in our garden in such enthusiastic crowds is both welcome and encouraging.

We’ve no immediate plans to have hives of our own, happy for the time being to let others do the hard work; it’s far less bothersome to get one’s honey from a jar, rather than a wooden box full of buzzing insects. In the meantime, I’m more than content that while we didn’t set out to plant a ‘bee friendly’ garden, by virtue of that fact that it’s brimming with flowers, that’s exactly what we have.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
and still more, later flowers for the bees
So that they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells. 

from To Autumn by John Keats, 1819

Some bee related links:

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust
Friends of the Earth’s Bee Cause campaign page
The British Beekeepers’ Association

*The title for this post came to mind from a sketch from Eddie Izzard’s Glorious tour. Maybe not Keats, but more belly laughs.

The daily barrow

Imagine if your wheelbarrow could talk. What stories would it have to tell? Mine gets thrown about, wheeled up and down planks and onto heaps and bonfires, and filled with everything from tools to compost, large rocks to loads of sand, steaming horse manure to the windblown petals from the rose garden. As my ever-present companion, I think it’s well placed to be able to give a fairly accurate and detailed account of how I go about the daily business of gardening.



Some time ago I had the idea of supplementing the records I keep of my gardening activity throughout the year by taking pictures of the contents of my wheelbarrow on a regular basis, part of the rationale being that even if I don’t have the time to make a detailed write up, a quickly snatched photograph will act as a useful aide memoire as to what was going on on any particular day. Using the wheelbarrow as the focus around which to capture this information is particularly appropriate as the vast majority of the material I process or work with – and certainly the tools I use – will at some point during the day be placed in the tray of that particularly useful object*. I’ve even started up a fledgling hashtag on Twitter – #thedailybarrow – with the hope of peering into my fellow gardener’s barrows to see what they’ve been getting up to. I’m incurably nosey, so I’ll be giving this another push as I’m determined it should gain some traction in the twittersphere, not content to rest until the internet groans under the weight of thousands of trending pictures depicting mounds of potpourri on wheels.

All of this is intended to be an inclusive activity. It may well be that you’re not fortunate enough to garden every day, but don’t on any account allow that to dissuade you from adopting the discipline I recommend here. Take a photo of your wheelbarrow when you do get the chance to fill it up and, if you feel inclined, tweet it with the hashtag #thedailybarrow. Perhaps your gardening is done in a bijoux courtyard space, a balcony, or even a window sill, where the use of a wheelbarrow would be somewhat restricted. The contents of your trug, or the old yoghurt pot you put your window box clippings in will be just as interesting to share, and just as informative to record. In much the same way as you can gain valuable insight about a person by examining what they choose to throw away, so you can tell what a gardener’s been getting up to by nosing through their wheelbarrow. Of course, one would hope that most of what’s in there will be bound for the compost heap rather than the dustbin, but the principle is valid as far as the analogy goes.

So, whether barrow, trug, or something smaller, why not form a habit of taking a snap of what goes in there – either for your own journaling purposes, or to share with others via #thedailybarrow? It takes very little effort and, if nothing else, it will provide you with the perfect raw materials from which to make a unique calendar for 2016.

* unless it's a day when I’m working in the greenhouse.

Big daisies

Early September; sun-warmed days, cooler nights, and moisty mornings of mists and plants dripping with dew. This is the month when the romantic notion of the gardener you wish to be can collide head-on with the stark reality of the gardener you are. Having occupied myself over the past few months fighting a series of losing battles against foes including greedy molluscs, disappointing compost (I really must sort that out – too much unrotted wood in a lot of the peat free jobbies, locking up all the nitrogen) and a general inability to make the most of limited time, it’s now getting a bit too late in the year for even the most heroic of my efforts to make much difference to this year’s garden. I find myself on the brink of thinking that, with the growth rate now slowing markedly, the most I can hope for is to make the place look a bit tidier and, having concluded that such a dour state of mind is neither helpful nor particularly enjoyable, I opt instead for a course of retail therapy.



To Perryhill Nurseries in Sussex, then, there to buy a cartful of of fabulously cheerful daisies in two and three litre pots, ostensibly to increase the stock and variety of the plants in my borders, but in all truth to perk up the prospect by filling the gaps left by dahlias which fell victim to the combined efforts of winter flooding and the bloody slugs.

My haul included three asters, the purple leaved Aster lateriliflorus 'Lady in Black', the reasonably mildew resistant Aster 'Little Carlow', and the small, gorgeous Aster divaricatus, all of which are tantelisingly bedecked with buds about to burst open. I also couldn’t resist some more echinaceas, especially the wonderful 'Tomato Soup' – just the colour of a bowlful of Heinz – and a few more 'White Swan', whose blooms I find hauntingly beautiful. They’ll be going over soon in time for the asters to step up, but I’ll pull the spent petals off to leave the firm, coppery central bosses of the flower heads, which are worthy of their space in the border once the inital drama of the flowers has passed.

Echinacea 'Tomato Soup', with a hitchhiker

Echinacea purpurea

Echinacea purpurea 'White Swan', soon to be de-petalled

Echinacea flower bud, looking very Sci-Fi

Of course, notwithstanding my uncharacteristically mopey moments earlier, there’s still plenty of exciting stuff to do in the garden. While some plants will soon need to be prepared for overwintering, now is also the time to start planning in earnest for next year’s garden. In practical terms, this mean sorting out my growing mediums and compiling a list of biennials and hardy annuals for autumn sowing. And, it goes without saying, leaving plenty of time for daisy gazing.