Some plants like a ride in the wheelbarrow

Press, 7 September 1984, Page 15

Some plants like a ride in the wheelbarrow

Gardener’s 1 IS DIARY

Derrick Rooney

In autumn and spring I spend so much time trying to eradicate the common yarrow from parts of the garden that I forget what pleasant and accommodating plants its more ornamental cousins are — until I see them flowering again in summer.

Achillea “The Pearl” is a beauty. True, it can be alarmingly vigorous in a heavyish soil (it doesn’t run or not so that you’d notice, in my light soil, thank goodness). But it is easily curbed by spading and forking around it once every year or two.

There isn’t anything else quite like it in the perennial border. Narrow, fresh green leaves slightly serrated at the edges, clothes the stems up their 60cm length, and above them throughout summer appear clouds of tiny white buttonhole flowers.

The general effect is of a slightly more substantial gypsophila, and it is less temperamental and just as good for picking. Achillea millefolium is its botanical name, but I suspect that the cultivated varieties are not selections of the species, but hybrids. Pink and occasionally red forms occur in the wild (the bank of the big water-race alongside State Highway 73 near West Melton, is a good place to look for them) but these lack the quality of the garden plants. Several are available; my

favourite is “Crimson Beauty” which grows a bit over waist high and isn’t really crimson but a rich carmine red. Alas, it doesn’t hold its colour like the yellow kinds, and unless divided and replanted regularly it soon deteriorates.

As the old gardener said, nothing makes it grow like a trip in a wheelbarrow. Euphorbia griffithii doesn’t need a ride in the wheelbarrow because it moves itself about, sending out long underground runners, like supermint. It’s never a nuisance, though, because it always puts itself in the right place, and after it has flowered at the beginning of summer the leafage remains attractively fresh and green throughout the season.

In autumn it colours nicely before dropping. But its real moment is right at the end of spring, when it flowers.

The colour especially in the selection “Fire Glow,” is glorious — a soft brickorange that almost everyone likes, and which clashes with nothing. Euphorbia sikkimensis is similar, perhaps more attractive, in leaf but less common and less colourful in flower. Both are from the Himalayas.

Inula hookeri is another Himalayan perennial which runs about if you let it, but can be controlled by a trip in'the wheelbarrow. It’s a smaller and more ornamental, cousin of the European

elcampane which grows in many herb gardens. A member of the daisy family, it has ordinary-look-ing green foliage above which, usually just below wasit height, appear in summer extraordinary-looking bright yellow sunflowers, covered with long hairs. A small piece will quickly make a big patch in soil which suits it, but is not deep rooted, and is easily spaded out If left to its own devices it usually fades away after

a few years, anyway. Even the rose family includes treasures that you can easily forget in winter — until you start digging in a border.

One such is Sanguisorba obtusa, the “Japanese burnet.” This is a cousin of the common sheep’s burnet and salad burnet, but it’s “Miss World” to their Miss Piggy. Elegant, blue-green pinnate leaves appear in spring, and above them throughout summer wave pretty wands topped by clusters of rosy pink bottlebrush flowers. The roots are as tough as ropes, and seem to go on forever when you’re digging them. In my previous gar-

den I had a big patch which was sheer delight all summer, but for some reason the pieces failed to thrive after I moved them. Usually, they’re as happy as larry to get a trip in the wheelbarrow, but perhaps a car journey was too much for them. However, I have just located a source of replacements, and I hope to be admiring my favourite pink bottlebrushes again, come summer. “The Pearl” is a hybrid of the European Achillea ptarmica (silent “p”), and another of its virtues is that, being sterile, it can never spread by seeding as some yarrows may. Beware of merchants offering seed under its name. You may get something pretty from the packet, but it won’t be “The Pearl,” which can be propagated only by vegetative means. “Coronation Gold” is another classy achillea, which has yellow flowers but otherwise is much closer to the conventional picture of a yarrow. Its ferny foliage, typical of the genus, has a suggestion of silver, and the large, flat heads, if picked just after they open, retain their colour and shape on drying. A hybrid of the Caucasian Achillea filipendulina and A. clypeolata, an old garden hybrid, “Coronation Gold” was raised in Britain by a Miss R. B. Pole in (you guessed it) 1952.

The older “Gold Plate” is a selection, I believe, of A. filipendulina itself. its flowerheads are smaller, but a deeper and richer yellow, though they aren’t quite so good for drying. Like “Coronation Gold," it grows about 1.5 m high, and has stout stems which need a minimum of staking. Even the common yarrow has a place in the flower garden. No-one would purposely grow the white, weedy form, except for bowling greens or sheep fodder, but some redflowered selections have been made. Astrantia major is the “masterwort,” one of those quiet plants whose charms are not always apparent at first glance, but which gradually sneak up and hit you from behind. The “flower” may be greenish or reddish green (I have both kinds) and is acutally a cluster of tiny florets with a collar of leafy bracts — curious rather than beautiful; what some would call a “flower arranger’s flower.” It grows about 60cm high, comes from Austria, has been in cultivation since the sixteenth century, and belongs to the parsley family. It is not a runner — the woody roots from dense clumps which can be the devil to prise apart. But unless it is divided regularly it “goes off’ after a few years. So this, too, is a plant to put in the wheelbarrow.