Garrya should be grown in more sheltered sites, in a shrub border or against a wall, in full sun or partial shade – it will thrive in any soil. It is fully hardy, will tolerate pollution and is well suited to coastal conditions and may even tolerate temperatures as low as -10 c. Height and spread of 4m (12ft) x 4m (12ft)

It was named after Nicholas Garry, Secretary of the Hudson’s Bay Company who assisted David Douglas in his explorations of the Pacific North-West in the 1820s, and can be found growing naturally in woodland in western USA, Central America and the West Indies. The name eliptica means eliptic, referring to the shape of the leaves. There are 13 species in the genus, the females produce purple brown berries on separate plants from the male, but the male catkins are what make this plant so appealing.

Garrya elliptica ‘James Roof’ is a particular favourite – a lovely form with dark sea-green, slightly larger leaves and silver-grey catkins up to 20cm (8in) long.

Pruning, if needed, should be done in mid spring to remove shoots that spoil symmetry and dead or damaged growth.  It can be susceptible to fungal leaf spot and also wind burn.

All the plants that we are recommending come with the RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM); that means that they have been tried and tested and have come out well thriving in dry shade conditions.

They will all need lots of watering in their first season to settle them in and you can also help by mulching well with compost and manure or bark chippings.  You can even plant through cardboard – water well first to make it more flexible and then using a knife, cut holes in the cardboard for planting through.  Cover with bark mulch to weigh the cardboard down and to make it look more attractive.

Our favourite dry shade plants:

Brunnera macrophylla – a member of the borage and comfrey family, it is a really good weed suppressant.  It has rather rough, heart-shaped leaves above tough, slowly spreading roots – the effect is rather like a rough-textured hosta, but unlike hostas doesn’t get eaten by slugs and snails! Known as the perennial forget-me-not, it produces very dainty pale blue flowers. The silver form called ‘Jack Frost’ really lights up a shady corner and is lovely cultivar. Height 45cm (18in)

Dryopteris filix-mas - I’m always surprised that this plant is tolerant of dry, shady conditions. If like me you have problems remembering what fern goes where, the clue is in the name DRYopteris!  It is known as the shuttlecock fern and once established, its finely dissected widely splayed fronds make a really good contrast to broader foliage. You have to wait for a while for it to reach maturity but it is worth the wait. Two favourite AGM cultivars are ‘Cristata’ and ‘Grandiceps Wills’ – both have crests at the tips of their fronds and of their leaf divisions. Height 1m (39in)

Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald ‘n’ Gold’ – the poor old Euonymus always seems to get a bad press – maybe because it is often used in places where it doesn’t get looked after very well.  It is a great winter plant and when the cold gets to it the small dark leaves, edged in gold, develop a lovely pink tinge.  It can be pruned hard in spring and clipped to shape, or if left will also climb walls.  It also looks good in containers in a shady position.  Height 50cm (20in)

Epimedium x perralchicum – evergreen epimediums, commonly known as bishop’s mitre, are good in dry shade, this one makes a dense clump. This form was found at Wisley, RHS gardens in the 1930s. It is in the same family as Berberis and Mahonia, and has the same yellow roots as these two cousins.  In spring sprays of very dainty, dancing, pale yellow flowers cover the foliage. It makes a good weed-smothering hardy perennial cover which is attractive all year. Height 40cm (16in)

Narcissus ‘Jack Snipe’ – now is bulb planting time and some of the small narcissi are brilliant in dry shade.  ‘Jack Snipe’ has strong stems and small flowers and look great gown in clumps, add plenty of compost before planting to give them a good start.

Geranium macrorrhizum ‘White-Ness’ – this is a lovely cultivar of the hardy geranium.  It has a very interesting aroma, also has rather good autumn colour – and it is sometimes evergreen here in Brighton!  It flowers May and June when it’s white flowers light up the shade, it’s a really good form.  Height 30cm (12in)

Lamium maculatum ‘Ghost’ – such lovely plant, its green-edged silvery foliage really catches the eye so ideal for dry shade.  This is a very vigorous growing form.  Height 30cm (12in)

Iris foetidissima – the ‘stinking iris’ is a great perennial for tough situations (fear not, it only smells when you crush the leaves!).  The heavy-duty long grass-like evergreen foliage is a good feature, and although the flowers are not terribly exciting I love the orange fruits, held in fat pods, that appear in autumn and last for ages.  Height 45cm (18in)

Vinca minor ‘Argenteovariegata’ - I love Vinca, its windmill-like flowers are very delicate and it comes in so many different colours and forms.  Great for suppressing weeds as it forms a very dense carpet.  If you cut it back in March with shears it will produce lots of flowers on the side shoots.  It often tends to get neglected but with care it will produce some lovely pale purple flowers in spring, and the leaves are evergreen. Height 10cm (4in)  NOTE: Vinca major is best left to larger gardens as it can be quite invasive!

Now is also a really good time to start your next year’s sweet peas, so here is our growing guide:

• you could sow your seeds next March, however we prefer to sow anytime from October until Christmas, (growing sweet peas over winter will produce stronger, more robust plants)
• sow two seeds to a pot – we usually use card toilet-roll tubes or long thin pots as sweet-peas really like a long, cool root run (as do all plants in the Leguminaceae family)
• push seeds in to about 1” below the surface of multi-purpose compost and water in well
• you can cover them with newspaper to keep the light out – if you have a heated propagator this can speed up germination but we don’t usually bother – they always germinate really well with a bit of warmth, fingers crossed, from the sun at this time of year!
• mice love the seed and could easily eat your whole crop overnight (!), so if you’re troubled by mice we suggest you soak the seeds in liquid paraffin, or for a more organic solution use seaweed fertilizer or lay holly leaves on top of the pots
• check for germination every day.  Once the seedlings appear, keep them cool at about 5 degrees centigrade – this promotes root and not stem growth. A cold greenhouse, or cold frame is ideal, but your plants will be fine in a light potting shed
• when there are three or four pairs of leaves, pinch out the leader (the growing tip) using your finger and thumb.  This will reduce the height of the plant and encourage side shoots making the plant bushier.
• try not to molly-coddle your plants too much – growing them on ’hard’ will help them to be much tougher plants and will also be less susceptible to slug damage.  Keep them in a cold frame, greenhouse or sheltered spot until next March when they can be planted out

We have some fantastic cultivars of sweet pea available at The Garden House, including L. Mattucana, the original sweet pea and quite special.  Come along on Friday between 3pm and 6pm and we can show you how we grow ours.

Our sweet peas are £2.00 for 15 seeds.  We also have the following varieties for sale:

Angela Ann – attractive almond pink sweet pea on a white back ground – it won the National Sweet Pea Societies Clay Cup in 1993.

Beaujolais – truly beautiful lightly scented flower with large rich deep burgundy maroon colour

Elizabeth Taylor – large, clear mauve flowers with wavy petals, heavily scented

Charlie’s Angel – outstanding blue overlaid lavender and very good for cutting.  Large blooms and classic sweet-pea fragrance

Geranium Pink – slightly scented salmon pink blooms

Claire Elizabeth – relatively large, scented white flowers, slightly ruffed with pink edge picotee.  Flowers age to darker shades.

Cupani - sometimes known as the original sweet pea, the oldest known sweet pea and is thought to have been sent to England in 1699 by Sicilian monk Francisco Cupani. Cupani still bears it’s original characteristics of delicate bicolour blooms and intense perfume

Diamond Jubilee –pure white flowers grown in celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Come over to The Garden House on Friday, 3-6pm, and find out more!

Location: The Garden House, 5 Warleigh Road, Brighton BN1 4NT.

The benefit of sowing in autumn, and not spring, is that you’ll have a much earlier flowering display.  At The Garden House we sow ours over the next couple of weeks in cell trays and leave them in the greenhouse until they have germinated.  When they are big enough, about 5cm, transfer them to individual pots such as 7cm square pots and then leave them outside all winter – if really bad weather is forecast we put them in a cold frame or back in the greenhouse.

This way you get really hardy plants that flower for months on end.  We plant them out in March.  Ten plants in each variety you choose is enough for most gardens, but sow fifteen of each in case you lose any over winter!

We’re selling hardy annual seeds at The Garden House – do come along any Friday afternoon to buy seeds or plants or for advice about growing hardy annuals.  Spend time looking at our books for inspiration, and enjoy a cup of tea and some homemade cake!

To Autumn by John Keats

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-eaves 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,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Sempervivum and Jovibarba species are commonly grown in containers, but they can thrive in engineering bricks with holes, driftwood and tufa rock, because of their ability to grow in very little compost. South-facing rockeries, gravel gardens and vertical walls also make good habitats. The also look good in broken pots.

They thrive in a sunny, outdoor position, in well-drained compost, such as John Innes No.1 or No.2, with 25% sharp horticultural grit for added drainage. A layer of grit should be added to the surface of the compost to further aid drainage.

Houseleeks are most valued for their distinctive rosettes of succulent, spirally patterned foliage, although they also bear attractive flowers from spring to summer. Each rosette is a separate plant, and is monocarpic – it flowers once then dies, but is soon replaced by other new rosettes, called offsets. These offsets can be separated and planted up, and will then grow into new clumps.

Sempervivums don’t need feeding, but do benefit from being repotted each year into compost containing slow-release fertiliser.

• S. calcareum – bears very striking, large, grey-green rosettes, which shade to reddish-brown at the leaf tips.
• S. calcareum ‘Extra’ – bears large numbers of blue-green leaves in each of its rosettes, each with a distinctive reddish-brown tip.
• S. arachnoideum – possibly the most famous species, also known as the cobweb houseleek, due to the network of white hairs at the leaf tips. These hairs protect the plant against dehydration and intense sunlight.
• S. ‘Irazu’ – the attractive purple rosettes of ‘Irazu’ are offset beautifully by their silver leaf margins. The leaves can fade to a duller pink during winter.
• S. ‘Reinhard’ – a vigorous variety, which forms clumps of upright green rosettes, thrown into sharp relief by the almost black leaf tips.
• S. ‘Fernwood’ – similar in colouring to ‘Reinhard’, ‘Fernwood’ has larger, more open rosettes. It maintains its colour well throughout the year.
• S. ‘Squib’ – red houseleeks generally require high light levels to maintain their colour, but ‘Squib’, a dark purple variety, keeps its colour well in winter.
• S. ‘Moerkerk’s Merit’ – the velvety appearance of ‘Moerkerk’s Merit’ is due to the tufty hairs that adorn the leaf tips. Related to S. arachnoideum, its leaves are a delicate silver-green.
• Jovibarba heuffelii ‘Angel Wings’ – whereas sempervivums mostly produce red or pink flowers, Jovibarba species produce yellow, more bell-like flowers. ‘Angel Wings’ is a vigorous variety with sharply pointed brown and green leaves.
• Jovibarba allionii – has long, tapered leaves.  Jovibarba offsets separate from the clump much more readily than those of Sempervivum, and the rosettes are generally more sturdy.

We have some stunning ‘Semps’ for sale at the Garden House – really worth a look for a special present or if you are starting a collection.  Also check out Sempervivums By Post (our main image is from their wonderful website)  www.sempsbypost.co.uk 

It is a sub-shrub or herbaceous perennial with a clump forming habit putting on a fantastic burst of rich blue flowers from late summer.  The foliage, which is green in spring and summer, turns to rich purple and red in autumn.  It grows to about 30cms (1ft) high and has a spreading habit.

It deservedly has won the RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM).  This plant enjoys a south or east facing situation and needs shelter and grows in moist but well drained soil. It will tolerate most soils but does well on chalk.  It looks good on banks and slopes, city or coastal gardens, cottage/informal gardens, flower borders and beds, Mediterranean climates or wall-side borders.

Cut back to ground level any shoots that get frost damaged, or you can cut the whole plant down in March if it hasn’t remained everygreen (depending on where you grow it) and it will shoot again ready to flower again next year.

This is a very useful plant for attracting late butterflies coming to feed, and humming-bird hawk moths are also efficient at extracting its nectar.

The plantsman E.A. Bowles suggests two possible ways in which C. plumbaginoides could have arrived here. The first is that a Mr Smith collected the seeds from the ruined ramparts of Shanghai; the second, which Bowles much prefers, is that seeds were plucked by a soldier as the British Army moved into Beijing.

Christopher Lloyd recommended growing it in dry-stone walls, where its colonising habit eventually results in a cascade of blue.

The Garden House is selling Ceratostigma plumbaginoides plants for £4.20 at our Friday Pop Up Garden Shop. We open every Friday afternoon between 3 and 6pm for tea and homemade cakes.  Entrance is free – take a walk around the garden and buy one of our home-propagated plants!  Location: The Garden House, 5 Warleigh Road, Brighton BN1 4NT

This vigorous, trouble-free climber looks really good in a tropical planting scheme, and will grow best at the base of a sheltered wall in full sun, although they can tolerate some shade. Even the leaves and tendrils look other-worldlly, deeply lobed, dark green and glossy. It is frost hardy but may need some winter protection in cold areas.  The eventual height is 10 metres.

The “Passion” in “passion flower” refers to the passion of Jesus in Christian theology. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion:

• The pointed tips of the leaves were taken to represent the Holy Lance
• The tendrils represent the whips used in the flagellation of Christ
• The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles (excluding St. Peter the denier and Judas Iscariot the betrayer)
• The flower’s radial filaments, which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower, represent the crown of thorns
• The chalice-shaped ovary with its receptacle represents a hammer or the Holy Grail
• The 3 stigmas represent the 3 nails and the 5 anthers below them the 5 wounds (four by the nails and one by the lance)
• The blue and white colours of many species’ flowers represent Heaven and Purity.

There are many other beautiful passion flowers but many of them need to be protected and are best grown in a glass house or conservatory.

Being easy to grow they require little maintenance, but if you don’t want them to reach too high, plant in pots or tubs and let them grow up and cascade over an obelisk.

Choose three to five of the strongest shoots, tying them in to horizontal wires. Once the plant is established, cut back the flowered shoots immediately after flowering to within two or three buds of the permanent framework of the plant. In spring remove dead, misplaced or overcrowded stems.

If you want to find out more about passion flowers, Passiflora: Passionflowers of the World by Torsten Ulmer and John M. MacDougal is a really good read.

The upright plants are ideal amongst perennials or other tall annuals, and are especially attractive to bees, butterflies and other insects. They also make valuable cut flowers where they bring a lightness and airiness to displays of bolder flowers in pastels or brighter shades.

Ammi is really easy to grow from seed – we sowed ours in a cold greenhouse in September, they were then potted on into 9cm pots and kept outside over winter to harden off in the cold frame.This makes for a very hardy plant and this treatment has really paid off as they have been in flower for about 8 weeks now.   Ammi are about 1.4m tall and hold themselves up well against other plants but need staking if they stand alone.

Just to note for future reference – we will be selling the seeds of Ammi at The Garden House from September!

Common name: Cranesbill ‘Orion’

Family: Geraniaceae

Cranesbills, Geranium, comprise a genus of around 300 species of annuals, biennials and herbaceous, semi-evergreen, sometimes tuberous perennials. They are sometimes confused with the genus Pelargonium, commonly, though mistakenly, known as geranium.

Herbaceous perennial: Fully hardy, it is in the Pratense group of hardy geraniums.

This stunning cultivar has attractive, highly dissected leaves (medium green, slightly hairy with paler more hairy reverse) that almost disappear from sight when the plant is in full bloom.

It bears large violet-blue flowers up to 5cm (2in) across, with fine dark red veins with white at the centre. It starts flowering in May and can go on until the autumn.

Height & spread: 80cm (31in) high x 170cm (67in)

Soil: Fertile, well-drained to moist

Aspect: Full sun or partial shade.  Cranesbills are found in all except very wet habitats in temperate regions. They are generally easy to grow. Compact perennials, to about 15cm tall, are good for a rock garden; trailing, spreading or mat-forming plants are effective as ground cover in a woodland or wild garden. Taller, clump-forming species and hybrids are suitable for a border or among shrubs.

Cultivation:

• Perfect for underplanting roses or filling the front of a border, coping well in full sun or partial shade.
• Water freely in the growing season. This plant is fast-growing and will benefit from a late summer chop to tidy up its habit and encourage production of fresh foliage and extended flowering.
• Plants may be damaged by vine weevil and sawfly larvae, slugs and snails. In dry conditions powdery mildew may be a problem.

Propagation:

• By seed – sow in containers outdoors as soon as ripe or in spring.
• Lift and divide large colonies in spring.

It has deservedly received the Award of Garden Merit (AGM).

This is a family of around 2000 species, occurring mainly in Europe and Asia, especially in the Mediterranean region. Most of them are herbs, although there are some woody plants. Many are grown as ornamental plants, although some are a source of dye or have medicinal uses.

Take a look at some of the plants from this family in your garden and look at the characteristics.

Members of this plant family usually have:

• Blue flowers in a coiled inflorescence – the lower ones always opening first
• Stems and leaves covered in rough hairs
• Four seeds

There are many different cultivars and most of them seem to have blue or pink flowers. The most well known include Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis), Heliotrope (Heliotropium), the Comfreys (Symphytum), Borage (Borago), and Hound’s Tongue (Cynoglossum).  Brunnera and the Anchusa are also in this family…

At the moment Anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’ is looking fantastic – it is one of our favourites and is growing well in the garden.  It is grown as a biennial so don’t forget to sow it in June or July to look good next year.  The Garden House will soon have the seeds for sale.