HERBACEOUS PLANTS FOR SUMMER FLOWER

Press, Volume C, Issue 29435, 10 February 1961, Page 9

HERBACEOUS PLANTS FOR SUMMER FLOWER

This year has been a good one for herbaceous plants, for they have enjoyed the summer rain. Bloom has been excellent as a result. The warm summers and drying winds of Canterbury are one reason why herbaceous borders are not seen blooming with the perfection we see in English gardening books. Nevertheless, given the right season, they take a lot of beating for summer flower. Looking round the “prize gardens’* at this time of the year you will see herbaceous plants mixed extensively with the bedding plants to give height and foliage effects; they don’t need to be grown in borders on their own.

The range of herbaceous plants is quite staggering. You can pick up almost any catalogue and count 100 dif, ferent plants, not including the varieties which are so extensive in some groups. There are at least three dozen different michelmas daisies in various colours, and a dozen and a half red-hot-pokers, while the specialised groups such as delphiniums have hundreds of varieties. Not all these varieties' are essential, of course, but if you’re a choosy sort of person then you can get the exact height and shade to go with the colour scheme and border size that you’re planning. Many herbaceous plants can be raised from seed, but the colours you get, in the highly hybridised groups ait least, are not likely to be the exact colour you want. This is why you buy them under fancy names such as "Little Bopeep” or “Sir Winston Churchill,” which may or may not suit the plant endowed. It is a little difficult .imagining the name of as true blue a conservative as Sir Winston Churchill being a fitting appendage for a red michelmas daisy!

The majority of herbaceous plants are multiplied by division in the early spring. Unfortunately those you get from your neighbour are usually those which grow too fast with him. I am sure you don’t get many paeonies passed over the garden fence! A good herbaceous border is the result of a good deal of thought and planning. The length of flowering season, the

association of heights and colours, the likes and dislikes of the plants themselves in sun or shade, moisture or dryness are all important. Just the same you can have a lot of fun working out a border ior yourself, and now is the time to begin, when the flowers are out, in getting to know the plants you would like included. Their heights and colours can all be jotted down in a small notebook ready for use later on. Then you’ll be able to accept your neighbour’s offerings with thankfulness as well as grace!

Four useful herbaceous plants:— Rudbeckia, or “Black-Eyed Susan,” is available in shades of yellow and gold, with varieties varying from 3 to 6 feet in height. Kniphofia, or “Red-Hot-Poker,” is well known. There are varieties which flower right through into the winter months. Echinops ritro, the “Globe Thistle,” is good for the back of the border, and excellent as an unusual plant for cutting. Steely-blue flowers. Hosta, the “Plantain lily,” is of value for the leaves as well as the mauve flowers. Does best in a shady, moist spot.