White and purple, and silver leaves among the blue

Press, 13 April 1978, Page 14

White and purple, and silver leaves among the blue

One plant — one of the few — seemingly unscathed this year by drought, wind, heat, and the piles of timber the builders stacked around it is also one of the few still flowering this week with undiminished freedom. It is Gaura lindheimeri, one of the good things to come out of North America for our gardens: a graceful perennial that grows perhaps a metre high and is out of flower for only a month or two in the winter. Because it flowers for such a long time, Gaura lindheimeri never provides the sheer masses of colour that, say, some of the perennial asters do at this time of the year. But I don’t think there is a day from October to May when it is quite without its white butterfly flowers. Why it is not more often offered to the gardening public I do not know. It is one of those plants With a hard, woody rootstock that does not divide readily, and does not re-establish easily if it is divided. But it is ridiculously easy — under glass or in a frame — to strike cuttings taken in spring before flowering begins, or indeed at any time of the year when you can find a shoot without flowers.

And small plants set out in November from spring cuttings will make substantial bushes by the end of summer. Perhaps it is unpopular with the trade because of its lack of common names common name 'it does — or because of the only have: butterfly bush. The nursery rows of that section of the trade that insists on slapping popular names on everything because it thinks gardeners are too dumb to remember the real ones must be groaning with butterfly bushes.

But in this case the nickname has some justifi» cation, because the stems

arch gracefully and the flowers, perching on short pedicals, really do look like clusters of butterflies. When I say its flowers are white I am really oversimplifying. They are white, but they also have a suggestion of purple, and as the stems are dark and elegant the whole plant has an air of grace and breeding. It is also a catalytic plant with the ability to make anything planted nearby, appear more vivid. I have teamed it with a c e r i s e-flowered cistus (called “Sunset”), a yellow cistus, a bricky helianthe-

GARDENER’S DIARY

Derrick Rooney

mum, yellow and cream achilleas, the lovely bluish rue, “Jackman’s Blue,” and Marjory Fish’s favourite artemisia — the one she named "Lambrook Silver” after her own, very famous garden. This plant 1 bought, wilting and neglected, for 25c at the tail end of a nursery sale years ago. Now, having ■ nursed it back to health, I guard it with my life.

Every spring I go out in fear and trembling that frost and rain or snow have sent it to that happy compost heap in the sky. But it grows on, unperturbed, spreading just a little wider each year from a hard and compact rootstock.

Because its lovely, lacy, silver leaves — and not its dull little greyish flowers — are what we want, I cut it almost to the ground in spring. Sometimes I give it a light haircut in summer too, but in autumn or winter I dare not touch it.

Like many grey plants, it will romp away after

the meanest weather — provided it has not been disturbed, manured, or otherwise interfered with, and provided its old, tatty growths of the season past are left untouched, so that it has natural cover behihd which to shelter from the elements.

If only it were easier to propagate I think “Lambrook Silver” would be on every garden centre’s shelves. But it is not easy. Often, it will not re-es-tablish if transplanted; small plants definitely will not move, so it must be raised in containers.

Young plants, before they have reached the roundness of their maturity, tend to look gawky and unappetising. And lastly, it is almost impossible to strike cuttings (being a hybrid, it of course cannot be duplicated from seed). There is a moment in spring when cutting of the previous season’s wood, pushed singly into pots of sandy soil, will survive long enough to grow roots. But this moment happens only during the day or two after growth begins. It is almost impossible to find it without quantities of sheer good luck.

If growth has not started there will be no life in the cuttings. If it has gone too far the cutting will flat.

All the same, “Lambrook Silver” is one of those plants worth perservering with. Sometimes you can get it going. My own present plant was raised from a cutting several years ago; the parent stayed behind in our previous garden, and for all I know is still expanding there.

Next year I might complete the gaura-artemisia picture by adding a root or two of the late-flower-ing, pink Japanese anemone. I have the white one nearby, and I think the combination will be a delightful one — beauty, as Duke Ellingotn would have said, with smack.