Regular readers may already have noticed that I am sucker for a subtropical plant. On a cold Sunday in February, whilst visiting London’s Chelsea Physic Garden, I found myself drawn in by the the scented warmth of one particular glasshouse, that which holds the garden’s collection of rare and threatened species from the Canary Islands and Madeira.

Scrambling towards the rafters in the centre of a fine display was a climber that I was completely unfamiliar with. The label read Canarina canariensis, the Canary bell flower. Research reveals that this elegant climber is an endangered member of the campanula family that carves out a fragile existence in the diminishing laurel forests of Tenerife, La Palma, Gran Canaria and La Gomera. Unusually for a campanula, the Canary bell flower regenerates from summer-dormant tubers which send up long, scrambling shoots in autumn. These can reach 6′-8′ in length, wandering along leaf-littered ground or through supporting shrubs. The soft leaves resemble those of a thunbergia. It’s in the winter that the bell-shaped flowers start to appear, divine but faintly reminiscent of a human organ with their fleshy tones and strongly contrasting venation, especially when back-lit.

After flowering the foliage dies down and the tubers preserve the plants’ energy until growth resumes again in autumn. This is how Canarina canariensis has adapted to survive summer drought in its natural habitat. In the UK we don’t concern ourselves greatly with water shortages, but the Canary bell flower makes a wonderful winter flowering subject for a cool, semi-shaded conservatory. In summer the tubers can be stored in a dark, dry place until they are ready to burst into life again. Naturally, I felt compelled to track down my new discovery. I found that seeds were available from Jungle Seeds priced at £3.95 for 10. I will let you know how I get on with cultivating my island beauty later in the year.

Daffodils are a wonderfully diverse group of bulbs thanks to years of careful hybridisation and selection. A scion of the narcissus family that is less often seen in British gardens is the tazettas, also known as Chinese sacred lillies, joss flowers or polyanthus narcissus. The reason for their relative scarcity is their alleged tenderness, a trait of their Mediterranean heritage which renders the plants slightly less tolerant of our cold, damp winters. Tazettas are extremely tall, up to 80cm, carrying blooms in bunches of up to eight atop their long stems. Whilst they are hopeless in a windy garden, they are ideal as cut flowers, blooming from the dawn of the year in clement spots such as the Isles of Scilly.

For fragrance, the tazetta narcissi are legendary. If you search a little you’ll discover there are several varieties commercially available. The Kim Kardashian of the family, known to all, is Narcissus tazetta ‘Paperwhite’, cultivated across the Northern Hemisphere to bloom at Christmas. Hybrids such as N. ‘Grand Soleil d’Or’ (yellow), N. ‘Ziva’ (pure white) and N. ‘Geranium’ (white with orange trumpets) are often used for forcing indoors. A new find for me this year was N. tazetta ‘Cragford’, which shares similar colouring to N. ‘Geranium’. Rather than grow them indoors I planted my bulbs tightly in pots outside and left them in the shelter at the base of a wall. Here they have come on slowly, flowering not at Christmas but in succession from mid March. The huge bulbs are now pumping out stem after stem of flowers, filling the air outside our front door with their potent fragrance (tazettas are grown commercially in Southern France to produce essential oils for the perfume industry).

The benefit of growing tazettas outside is that they do not become drawn and floppy like they do indoors, plus the flowers last much longer. Bought bulbs are typically large and will produce a generous number of stems provided they are planted in a gritty, well-drained compost. Give them a little protection from cold and excessive wet and they will perform as well as hardier types. Around town there are many gardeners who have successfully cultivated these beautiful bulbs in the ground, so they are well worth experimenting with if you have a warm, south-facing border. Just three or four stems are enough to bring the scent of spring into the house, so plant generously this autumn and you can expect to enjoy fragrant flowers for many weeks.

When I set out to post daily on the subject of daffodils, little did I know how distracting this week’s almost perfect gardening weather would be. The opportunity to spend two unbroken days outside rarely comes along and I have gardened from dawn to dusk. In the course of the last 48 hours, planting bulbs and rejuvenating borders, I have been enveloped by the scent of hyacinths, serenaded by bees and danced for by a solitary butterfly. This I have enjoyed in the company of our resident doves, Daphne and Dudley. They are becoming tamer and tamer by the day, almost eating out of my hand. If only they would build a decent nest there could be a whole family of them at The Watch House.

Narcissus ‘Toto’ began flowering when it was just 4 inches tall, but has experienced a dramatic growth spurt this week. The bulbs have come into their own in the warm sunshine, throwing up stems bearing two, three or four flowers. The blooms deserve a companion planting of blue scilla, chinodoxa or muscari to bring out their curds and whey colouring, not the sugary pink cyclamen I foolishly paired them with. I will know better next time. Their fragrance is not as intoxicating as Narcissus ‘Cragford’ or Narcissus ‘Minnow’, but is pleasing enough if you get your nose in there. Honoured with an Award of Garden Merit by the RHS, Narcissus ‘Toto’ ticks all my boxes and will definitely be on my bulb order again this summer.

1. Yesterday, after several abortive attempts, I finally managed to drag Him Indoors to Derry Watkins’ Special Plants Nursery at Cold Ashton, near my home town of Bath. Although Derry’s nursery is tucked half way down a steep hill below the village it’s evident that the settlement was aptly named. The view out towards the Severn Estuary and Wales is beautiful, but it’s a chilly spot. At the end of Greenways Lane – one of those byways that has a strip of grass in the middle and golden dandelions at the edges – we arrived to find we were the only customers. The nursery team had found a warm, sheltered spot for an alfresco lunch. I felt slightly guilty intruding on their break but, as I hoped, there were many wonderful plants to distract us.

   Derry Watkins has a reputation for tracking down rare and interesting perennials and grasses, many of which have been tried and tested in her own exposed garden. Like me, she also has a penchant for tender perennials, pointing out that they often flower for much longer than their hardy counterparts. I particularly wanted to get my hands on the white form of Geranium maderense, which Derry refers to as ‘Alba’. I have a single plant of ‘Guernsey White’, yet to flower, that I raised from seed, but wanted more. Having bagged two Albas, we went on to explore the rest of the nursery. Three Digitalis canariensis, two Zaluzianskya ovata, an Impatiens omeiana and an Impatiens kilimanjari x pseudoviola ‘Pale Pink’ later, my wallet was bare. (The latter I hope to propagate and grow in the light shade of the passageway that leads to our front door.)

   Special Plants Nursery had already lived up to expectations, but then, as I cast a discerning eye over one last bench, I spotted Chorizema ilicifolium commonly known as the holly flame pea. I was smitten, but alas only the display plant remained. Thankfully this lanky Western Australian native with its holly-like leaves and neon blooms is easily raised from seed, flowering when only a few inches high and continuing on to about 3ft at maturity. The plants require the shelter of a cool greenhouse or conservatory but reward with copious flowers from March until October.

   Seeds of Chorizema ilicifolium are available from Chiltern Seeds. As soon as there is any space available on my windowsill I’ll be sowing some!

I will be devoting a post to a different spring flower each day this week, and they don’t come much more special than Pleione formosana. I had always presumed these to be tricky customers, reserved for the kind of gardeners that keep pristine alpine houses, but after picking up three plants for a song at a car boot sale in Cornwall, I resolved to see if I could make them happy.

As it turns out, Pleione formosana, somewhat oddly dubbed the ‘windowsill orchid’, is simplicity itself to cultivate. Mine are planted in a shallow terracotta pan in a very loose homemade compost made from decomposing bark and leaves. When not in flower the pot sits beneath a garden bench in cool shade and stayed outside all winter. This was a risky move as pleiones are supposed not to like frost: I would not recommend you follow my lead. Once I’d built my little unheated grow house in February I moved them inside, covered by a mound of dry magnolia leaves. The flowers began to form about three weeks ago and are now in full bloom. They are like exotic moths with fringed mouths projecting out beneath lilac-pink, wing-like petals, every inch as beautiful as the rest of the orchid family. The number of flowers has tripled year-on-year, creating quite a display. Each time I go outside I can’t resist looking in on them through the glass.

After flowering come foot-long, creased leaves which project outwards from the tiny pseudobulbs that fuel the plant. These remain, looking rather aspidistra-like, until late autumn. In their native China and Taiwan they can be found growing on the forest floor in cool mountain habitats. Consequently they appreciate dappled sunlight, humidity and lots of organic matter. Given too much sun and warmth they may not thrive – hence they are better suited to a very well ventilated, frost free greenhouse than a windowsill indoors.

I am utterly besotted by these lovely little orchids and am trying a primrose-yellow variety called ‘Shantung’ this year (yet to flower). Next spring I have a yearning for a pure white cultivar …. or maybe a darker pink. Oh dear, I can feel a new addiction coming on! If, like me, you are interested to learn more about pleiones, then I have a discovered a very informative website, imaginatively named The Pleione Website, which offers excellent advice. Meanwhile, I hope I shall enjoy a fortnight or more with these charming orchids.

Yesterday I sang the praises of an orchid, today I am waxing lyrical about an onion, or a garlic to be precise. Monday’s Spring Flower Candy is a complete contrast to pretty Pleione formosana, although both plants grow from bulbs and enjoy a moist woodland environment. My subject is Allium ursinum, better known as ramsons, stinking Jenny or wild garlic, the ephemeral herb that’s responsible for filling ancient English woodlands with a mildly oniony scent throughout the month of April. When happy it produces a continuous blanket of emerald green leaves as far as the eye can see.

As usual the latin name gives away something about this wild plant: ‘ursine’ means ‘related to bears’ and this refers to our furry friends’ liking for digging up the bulbs whilst out hunting. Thankfully we haven no bears left to compete with when we go foraging. Wild boars are also partial to a little wild garlic, so the latin name might just as easily have been Allium porcinum. Bears clearly have good taste as the newly emerged leaves are delicious, especially lightly steamed and dripping with butter. They are also tasty stirred into a pasta dish, made into pesto or used as a replacement for chives in omelettes, soups and stuffings. In Switzerland cows were once fed with wild garlic in order to impart a garlicky flavour in their milk. This was then made into a savoury butter. The leaves are not in the least bit coarse, withering and disappearing beneath ground again before they have a chance to toughen up.

I find wild garlic pretty easy to identify, especially once the little heads of white flowers (also edible) start to emerge, but care should be taken when collecting leaves in the wild. Cases of poisoning have been reported as a result of mistaken identity – sometimes for arum lilies and sometimes for lily of the valley, both of which are toxic and like the same conditions. The smell of garlic is something of a give-away so, if in doubt, rub the leaves and that will confirm if you have the right plant. Always pick over the leaves and give them a thorough wash before cooking.

If you want to be sure, and have the right conditions to grow your own, seeds are available from Chiltern Seeds. The BBC Food website suggests a range of recipes that harness the delicate flavour of wild garlic, including honey and za’atar glazed spring lamb with salsify and wild garlic purée, and king crab with asparagus, wild garlic and hazelnuts. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Wild garlic is a seasonal treat that can rarely be bought, so don your wellies, seek it out and give it a try. Happy foraging.

I’ll admit I am a little overdue with this one, but 2015 has been one of the latest I can recall for blackthorn blossom (the flowers of Prunus spinosa). In a normal year there could be a clear month between the single white flowers of blackthorn falling and the appearance of hawthorn blossom (lovingly referred to as ‘may’), but this spring the gap has amounted to days rather than weeks.

Unlike hawthorn, where leaves emerge first, blackthorn blooms on dark, naked stems. The term ‘blackthorn winter’ warns farmers and gardeners of the danger in considering the blossom to mark the beginning of summer, as damaging frosts may well coincide or follow. Never has that been truer than this year, when the temperature during most nights in April has hovered perilously close to freezing.

Something about the profusion and brilliance of blackthorn blossom, especially set against a clear blue sky, makes this native shrub particularly special in the pantheon of British wildflowers. I spent many peaceful moments photographing the windswept bushes on the coast between Looe and Polperro two weeks ago when the blossom was at its zenith. The buds form deep into the shrub, along thorny, lichen encrusted branches, eventually coating the whole bush with a frosting of flowers. A plentiful display bodes well for the crop of sloes that will follow, ready to be harvested after the first frosts of autumn. Once a countryman’s tipple, sloe gin has now become a mass market drink, although nothing tastes quite as good as a homemade infusion.

Taking on an unassuming mantle of green throughout the summer (the small leaves were once used ‘unofficially’ to bulk up expensive imported tea), blackthorn continues to play its part in nature’s grand plan by providing shelter for nesting birds and food for the caterpillars of many moth species. Blackthorn wood is prized for burning slowly and without smoke, as well as making excellent walking sticks. Attractive, hardy, tolerant and useful to man and beast, Prunus spinosa is the very backbone of a good country hedge and at the heart of our countryside. It deserves our respect and admiration.

Our London garden offers few plants their perfect conditions – no surprise when you consider it was once no more than a shady patch of shattered Tarmac with subsoil dumped on top. And yet so many plants do make a go of it, helped along by a little (although not enough) soil improvement.

A plant that has done better and better every year, despite being moved a couple of times, is a handsome woodlander named Disporum megalanthum (fairy bells). Purchased several years ago from Harvey’s Garden Plants, this rare perennial didn’t make its mark until last year, when suddenly it found its stride. Early in April half a dozen burgundy stems surged up through the damp ground beneath last season’s foliage. From the vigorous new stems emerged furrowed, oily-green leaves, followed by hundreds of nodding, acid-yellow bells.

The flowers are intriguing rather than inherently beautiful, but the contrast with the dark, glossy foliage is something I enjoy. I have to clamber around the unstable edge of our pond to really appreciate them standing out cleanly against our London stock brick walls. Later in the year the chocolate tint in the leaves diminishes and tiny black berries appear. The foliage remains fresh-looking over winter, but falls to one side and perishes as the new growth emerges in spring.

I grow it by water in a sheltered spot at the foot of a wall, but woodland edge conditions are what Disporum megalanthum really calls for. Currently I have it underplanted with Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’. Next year I intend to introduce greenish yellow Tulipa ‘Formosa’ (below, photo: Van Engelen) and T. ‘Spring Green’ around and about to pick up the unusual colouring of the disporum flowers. Standing about 24″ tall Disporum megalanthum will more than hold its own amongst the bulbs.

Plants of Disporum megalanthum are available from Harvey’s Garden Plants and other specialist shade plant nurseries.

The recipe for a classic seaside garden is as tried and tested as that for the most British of cakes, a Victoria Sandwich. Take a sheet of tightly mown lawn, add a fringe of hydrangeas (preferably blue) and spike with a handful of cordylines (Cordyline australis). Add phormiums (a modern twist) or agapanthus to taste and then scatter with osteospermums and beach asters (Erigeron glaucus). For that finishing touch, season with a handfuls of crocosmia (not the invasive kind), Gladiolus communis subsp. byzantinus and Kaffir lilies (Schizostylis coccinea). These will give you colour in summer and autumn. A dash of daffodils will mean spring is covered and a well chosen camellia will give you flowers over winter too. Wrap the whole thing with an evergreen band of Griselinia littoralis or Escallonia rubra and, ‘Tah Dah!, the job is done.

This timeless concoction won’t scare the horses on the parades and drives of the South West, but the ingredients within it are worth knowing about if you’re trying to make a garden in an exposed spot.

When we were down in North Devon this weekend I was reminded of what a wonderful plant the beach aster, Erigeron glaucus, is. It’s tough, floriferous and will grow just about anywhere, especially if it’s vertical. It was greening walls long before Patrick Blanc came along and started glueing ferns and bromeliads to the exteriors of posh hotels and will be around for a long time after. The fuzzy-edged daisies are happiness in flower form, turning their faces upwards towards the skies whether they be grey or blue. The soft pink colour contrasts nicely with the slate greys and cool granites of the West Country, the old-gold centres even picking up the orange tones of encrusting lichen. Blooms will keep appearing for months. Interspersed with close relative Erigeron karvinskianus and red valerian (Centranthus ruber), you have a classic planting combination for a garden wall. The icing, if you like, on the cake.

Once you have it, Erigeron glaucus will seed itself into nooks and crannies without making a nuisance of itself. All the plant demands is a neutral, sandy or free-draining soil and lots and lots of sunshine, which by-and-large it gets down south. Erigeron glaucus is hardy to about -15 centigrade, but if damaged by frost will regrow from the roots. Named varieties include E. ‘Seabreeze’, E. ‘Roseus’ or E. ‘Elstead Pink’. All are pink, so if you live by the seaside it’s probably easier to ask your neighbour for a small plant or basal cutting and save your pennies for something fancier.

Seed is available from Chilterns Seeds.

I need more plants like I need a hole in the head. The garden is already bursting at the seams and there’s twelve weeks to go until it reaches its most junglified. But when confronted with a bargain my willpower withers like a dandelion doused with RoundUp. ‘Go on’, goaded Martin the Garden Centre Man, ‘they’re only £1.49 (for 3) and will come up a treat’. And indeed they did. In the space of six weeks, the finger-like tubers have produced lush rosettes of prettily divided leaves and the beginnings of a fine display of flowers. The blooms are as cool as a cucumber, brilliant white with a touch of daffodil-yellow in the throat.

Like most of the bulbs and tubers I grow in containers, my incarvillea (commonly known as hardy gloxinias) are planted in John Innes No.3 with added grit. Because I can’t water daily I find that loam-based compost retains moisture better, with the added bonus of being weighty – helpful when the wind blows. So far I am impressed. Incarvillea delavayi ‘Snowtop’ appears effortless to grow whilst appearing as if it could be challenging, which is always satisfying. The flowers are providing a focal point whilst many of my other containerised plants are establishing themselves. As a stop gap it’s marvellous, and quite possibly the best £1.49 I’ve ever spent.

Have you tried growing incarvillea? What are your experiences? Can you recommend any good named varieties?

Mention the name bindweed and the first thing that springs to mind is one of gardeners’ greatest horrors, hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium). Undoubtedly beautiful in flower, hedge bindweed is a thug and is welcomed only into the wildest of gardens by the bravest of gardeners.

Altogether tamer, docile in fact, is blue rock bindweed, Convolvulus sabatius (also known as C. mauritanicus). An extremely polite customer, this small, scrambling plant stays in one place, flooding the ground around it with pools of delicately creased blue flowers. They start to unfurl at the end of May and often persist until November. I have grown Convolvulus sabatius in our coastal garden for many years now, giving each plant a haircut in autumn and then again in April. The trailing stems, cascading down our slate walls, tend to get tossed about like a bad comb-over during winter, so a trim keeps the plants tidy.

In the UK Convolvulus sabatius is commonly sold as a annual for hanging baskets and containers. This is often the cheapest way to obtain plants, but in the south of England you will find them perfectly hardy and reliable as perennials. Blue rock bindweed does not wander or set seed, simply making a stronger clump year after year. For best results plant somewhere that enjoys sunshine for at least half the day. Positioning at the top of a wall or slope gives the trailing stems a chance to show themselves off. Once established Convolvulus sabatius needs almost no maintenance and is very drought tolerant. If it does outgrow its allotted space then I give it a haircut and new shoots quickly appear – in a good season I might do this a couple of times. The flowers close in the evening and when they’re over they roll themselves up into tight twists like little Rizla papers before dropping. Their colour is an exceptionally pretty mauvish-blue, which works well with hotter pinks and yellows.

With its lens-shutter flowers and good manners Convolvulus sabatius is a bindweed I could never banish to the fringes of my garden.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of echiums. I love their jewel-coloured flowers, the way they attract bees to the garden and their incredible range of stature; from sprawling Echium tuberculatum to sky rocketing Echium pininana. Slowly but surely I am increasing my collection in our coastal garden, adding E. gentianoides, E. wildpretii and E. candicans this year. One species, our native viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) is missing from the line-up. The reason? There’s more than enough of it already on the shores of East Kent and I doubt very much that I could grow it better than it grows itself.

Viper’s bugloss shares many attributes with its Mediterranean cousins and may indeed have originated in North Africa. The plants form a rosette of coarse, bluish-green leaves which give rise to hairy spikes of gentian-blue, funnel-shaped flowers from May to September. Viper’s bugloss favours disturbed chalk grassland and shingle beaches, rubbing shoulders with fennel, red valerian and mallow. The shoreline between Sandwich and Kingsdown in Kent is festooned with this handsome plant right now, its intense flowers alive with insects including buff-tailed and red-tailed bumblebees, large skipper and painted lady butterflies, burnet moths, honey bees and red mason bees. Honey made by bees that have feasted on echium pollen, which is violet-blue, is said to taste delicious.

Historically, viper’s bugloss was believed to cure snake bites and to protect people from being bitten by reptiles. This could well be because the open, parched, wild habitats the plant enjoys are the same as those frequented by snakes.

A biennial, viper’s bugloss is perfectly easy to cultivate from seed (some might say a little too easy) provided you can offer it chalky soil and sharp drainage. Personally I think the lapis-lazuli flowers look best emerging from a sun-drenched shingle strand, set against an azure summer sky. A litte touch of The Med on our cold, windswept shores.

The number of occasions during the day when I feel I am starting to lose my marbles is increasing steadily, to a point where I genuinely wonder if senility might be imminent. I have always been a list-writer but have reached a stage where noting down ‘to dos’ has become a necessity rather than a safety net. Evernote, one of the only really useful apps I’ve ever dowloaded, has become my surrogate memory, holding everything from directions to Christmas card lists, online shopping receipts to restaurant bookings. Plant lists languish up there in Evernote’s ether, recording treasures I’ve bought or coveted in other people’s gardens. And it’s just as well.

I returned to London on Sunday night to discover two rectangular planters I thought I’d filled with pink lilies resplendent with gilt-edged, red blooms. I had convinced myself for 4 months that the bulbs I’d planted were Lilium speciosum var. rubrum and thoughtfully underplanted them with pink Gaura lindheimerii. I will never know if the two shades of pink would have been a marriage made in heaven, but I do now appreciate that gold, ruby-red and blush are not perfect bedfellows.

Evernote reveals the bulbs I’d bought were in fact Lilium ‘Scheherezade’. I suspect I’d selected them for our coastal garden where fiery colours reign supreme, but then wrongly located them in the flurry of spring bulb planting. Despite being incongruous where I’ve planted them, these lilies have been splendid from the moment they pushed through the ground: tall, strong and unsullied by snails and weevils. This is because Lilium ‘Scheherezade’ is a tetraploid ‘Orienpet’ hybrid, which basically means it’s a lily on steroids (‘Orienpet’ is a horrid blending of the two categories ‘Oriental’ and ‘Trumpet’). L. ‘Scheherezade’ was bred by LeVern Friemann in Washington, USA by crossing two equally beefed-up hybrids called L. ‘Thunderbolt’ and L. ‘Black Beauty’. Scheherezade’s Stallone-esque genes mean that she is capable of reaching 6ft with each stem carrying tens of flowers rather than the normal 6-8.

In their first year my lilies are already statuesque, if not quite the perfect shade. In comparison to the strength of the plants the fragrance emitted by the waxy flowers is surprisingly light and fresh – great for those who are not fans of more potent-smelling lilies. I can only compare the scent to a particularly delicate rose.

Come the end of the year I will need to decide whether to relocate the bulbs or work around their bold colouring. Whatever I decide, I had better note it down somewhere.

I’d love to hear if I’m the only one that forgets what I’ve planted where and what schoolboy / schoolgirl errors you’ve made in your garden this year.

Streptocarpus saxorum: False African violet, Cape primrose.

Streptocarpus and I have an on/off love affair. I buy them from the garden centre looking fresh and full of promise; sometimes they stay that way until the fatal day when I give them a drop more water than they would like. Then, taking no account of the months, occasionally years of TLC I have bestowed upon them, they go terminally limp and refuse to recover.

I now operate a strict once a week watering regime, allowing the plants to become completely dry between soakings. This works until a house guest or the cleaner takes pity and administers a deadly dose of H2O. Being creatures of the woodland floor streptocarpus dislike drafts and direct sunlight as much as overwatering. So, unless you are very green fingered, or live in the Drakensberg Mountains from whence they hail, you are going to need to make an effort to keep them alive.

My experience is that streptocarpus will let you know when they are happy. My finest specimen, a hybrid called ‘Albatross’, lives on the sill of a north-facing window in a spare bedroom. I visit it to water and deadhead once a week and in return I get a long succession of white flowers with acid-yellow throats. The leaves occasionally grow so long that they hang half way down to the floor. I dare not move it as even the slightest change of environment has put paid to other cherished plants.

I thought all Streptocarpus required mollycoddling until I stumbled upon Streptocarpus saxorum. In truth I didn’t know what I had stumbled upon for about three years as I couldn’t identify it at first. Every summer I would stay in a German castle on a business trip, and there the window boxes in the courtyard would be filled with a plant possessed of soft, felted, green leaves, bearing lilac flowers on long wiry stems. They had the appearance of little butterflies fluttering in a breeze.

Fast forward to spring 2015 and I spotted pots of the very same plant at our local garden centre, tucked away on the bottom shelf of a Dutch trolley. I snapped them up, took them home and then worried about what their identity might be. I eventually established they were Streptocarpus saxorum, which by forming leafy stems rather than sprouting from a basal rosette makes them streptocarpellas rather than a streptocarpus. To me, both sound more like bacteria than flowering plants.

Recalling the ideal conditions at the German castle, I planted my streptocarpellas in window boxes and placed them on the outside sill of our neighbour’s garage window. There, sheltered and shaded from the sun for all but an hour every day they have prospered, quietly forming bushy plants attended to by a troupe of dancing butterfly blooms. Like my indoor streptocarpus they are watered just once a week by me, and by rain in between times. Apart from that they seem easy going and disease free. Even snails don’t seem especially interested.

I will take cuttings before the winter sets in, as the plants are not frost hardy. In the meantime all I have to do is deadhead regularly and feed with a high potash fertiliser every fortnight.

Streptocarpus saxorum is a wonderful choice for windowboxes or containers in cool, shady areas and deserves to be more widely grown. Unlike its indoor cousins it is no trouble at all.

Streptocarpus saxorum is available from Dibleys Nurseries, holders of the National Collection of Streptocarpus.

When I was a boy, most dahlias looked a little like D. ‘Lady Darlene’. They were bold and brazen, not afraid to be bi-coloured or brassy. Their flowers were either big, top-heavy confections or perfectly pert little pom-poms perfectly designed to hide earwigs. The dahlias of my childhood were the drag queens of the floral world, all loud and artificial, the rude girls in the garden. Is it any wonder that I adored them? And now they are back, perhaps not in the mainstream, but creeping into connoisseurs’ collections and creating a buzz again.

At The Salutation on Saturday, Head Gardener Steven Edney shamelessly confessed his love for these buxom beauties, even admitting that his girlfriend described his taste in flowers as ‘a little bit gay’. Here in the 3.5 acres surrounding one of Lutyens’ masterpieces there’s room enough for all persuasions. Steven’s passion for dahlias extends from shy singles to the kinkiest of colarettes.

Accompanied by a chorus of tithonias and cannas Dahlia ‘Lady Darlene’ put on quite a show. Her Phoenix-like petals would not look out of place on the Eurovision stage or in Shirley Bassey’s wardrobe. Quieter, but not a lot, was Dahlia ‘Babylon Lilac’ (above), her gorgeous, swept-back lavender-pink petals carried on plants of supreme stature. How fitting that she was bejewelled with raindrops. And then there was her sister D. ‘Babylon Gevland’, with apricot flowers slashed across with tangerine-orange.

These dahlias are fierce flowers, not afraid to be out and proud. They’ve been there, done that and thrown the t-shirt in the bin.

Rather like real drag queens, such diva dahlias are fun to spend the evening with but perhaps not what you’d take home to meet the parents. They are still too kitch and outrageous for most of us to integrate into our gardens. Time will inevitably change that view and in a few year’s time we’ll all be trying to out-do one another with our new fabulous friends. You heard it here first.

The Salutation Dahlia Festival continues until September 15th 2015

Dahlias come in all shapes and sizes. This is why, like other extensively hybridised flowers, dahlias are classified by flower type. There are waterlilies, stars, fimbriated (fringed) and cactus types; orchids, anemones, pompons and paeonies. Just don’t ask me to tell them all apart. Carving out a niche between the singles and the decorative doubles, collerette dahlias have the simple form of a single dahlia but with a flambuoyant twist.

Collerettes display a simple outer row of almost flat, overlapping petals, with a central disc encircled by a ‘collar’ of small florets that create a ruffled appearance. This extra frilly bit makes collerettes more decorative than their single sisters, but still easy to place in the border. A good collerette dahlia will hold its blooms nicely above the plant’s foliage, making them ideal for cutting, serving as a magnet for bees.

Dahlia maestro Steven Edney, Head Gardener at The Salutation, counts deep pink D. ‘Edith Jones’ amongst his favourite collerettes, growing several others including scarlet D. ‘Mars’, cool, creamy D. ‘April Heather’ and berry-bright D. ‘Lilian Alice’.

Daisy-like and dramatic, collerettes are the shooting stars of the dahlia family; bright, lively and just enough to brighten up your late summer borders.

My knowledge of parasitic plants is limited to say the least. It extends no further than dodder (Cuscuta epithymum) and toothwort (Lathraea clandestina). But now, following my walk around Hong Kong’s Peak, I can add a third, Balanophora harlandii. 

Parasitic plants seem to share little in common apart from having been knocked out in the qualifying rounds of the evolutionary beauty contest. They are at best curious, at worst ugly. To add insult to injury, Balanophora harlandii is, shall we say, a little suggestive in its appearance too. Those with cleaner minds might liken it to a toadstool, which is what I initially mistook it for (obviously).

Here in Asia, Balanophora species (there are about 100 in total, all parasitic) are used in folk medicine for the treatment of a number of ailments. As science catches up with folklore, it seems that ‘folk’ might have been right all along. However scientists need to work quickly. A new species named Balanophora coralliformis (looks like coral and also a little bit rude) is already endangered. Only 50 plants are known in the wild and they are all on a single mountain in the Philippines.

You will have deduced by now that I failed to take plant science very seriously at university, which is why I am now a buyer, not a botanist:-)

With special thanks to Chad for identifying the subject of today’s Daily Flower Candy.

Mesembryanthemum crystallinum: bingcai, common ice plant, crystalline iceplant, ice greens.

When in China, my general policy is to eat every food I am presented with: after all, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I am rarely disappointed and often dazzled by the wonderful flavours, colours and textures that are shared with me. The Chinese and Taiwanese love to eat, and enjoy nothing better than to treat a guest to the best meal they can offer. Hence I will return home to the UK considerably plumper than when I left.

Over the last two weeks I have dined like a king on prawns, crab (soft-shell and hairy), lobster, eel, jellyfish, razor clams, beef, pork and chicken, all accompanied by wonderful rices, plump, deep-fried buns and gleaming green vegetables.

One appetiser which has always mystified me is a glistening, leafy shoot that’s served occasionally at the start of a meal with a vinegar-based dressing. The leaves appear to be coated with a thick frost, as if they’ve been stored in a freezer, but are in fact presented at room temperature. They taste fresh and clean, with just a hint of sour and salt to kick one’s palette into gear. Thousands of little bubbles on the surface of each leaf explode on the tongue as you chew them, releasing a burst of vitamin-rich refreshment.

Whilst adventurous, I do like to know what I am eating so I enquired and was told the vegetable was called ‘bingcai’ in Catonese or ‘ice greens’ in English. In Hong Kong the leaves have only been available for the last few years (at a steep £5 per kilo) having falling out of favour in the 1930s. Ice greens are in fact a member of the flowering mesembryanthemum family from South Africa and may also be cooked like spinach. Sautéed gently they will maintain their crunch very nicely.

Should you fancy growing this unique vegetable yourself, you can. In the UK, seeds are available from The Botany Seeds Company. Not only will you be trying something new, but you can guarantee your dinner guests will be dazzled by your worldliness and intrigued by the refreshing taste.

I will admit to being underwhelmed when the RHS named Geranium ‘Rozanne’ their ‘Plant of the Centenary’ in 2013. The hardy perennial was chosen by RHS members from a list of 10 plants which included Russell Hybrid lupins, Rosa ‘Iceberg’, and Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’. All are charming, garden-worthy plants but don’t really set my pulse racing. To my mind, time and popularity has rendered them slightly passé. Each candidate was previously declared a ‘Plant of the Decade’ with G. ‘Rozanne’ claiming the title in the early noughties.

Now that I have had the opportunity to grow the plant in question I can better understand its appeal. Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is completely hardy and bears lovely mauve-blue flowers with paler centres non-stop from May until November, even December in a mild year. Right now, following a jolly good haircut in August, my plant is once again smothered in flowers. Her sprawling nature can be a blessing or a curse depending on where you position her – in my case much too near the edge of a narrow path – but this is a minor grumble. Any flowering plant that tolerates the shade and diabolical drainage in our London garden commands my immediate respect. I have Geranium ‘Rozanne’ planted with Anemone ‘Wild Swan’ (‘Plant of the Year’ in 2013) and Tiarella cordifolia, which is a lovely, low maintenance combination.

I am still not convinced a ‘Plant of the Centenary’ is a distinction of very much value to gardeners. The plant world has so much bounty to offer it is surely impossible to consider any one plant head and shoulders above the rest? And if our hands were forced, I am pretty sure we’d all choose differently; a plant that spoke to us somehow, that responded to our tender loving care. But if a plant had to win, then Geranium ‘Rozanne’ was a well-deserving, forgiving, timeless plant that one could never go wrong with.

Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is widely available in nurseries and garden centres.

If you live in the Northern hemisphere, you may consider Cobaea scandens, otherwise known as cup and saucer vine, an odd choice of Christmas Flower Candy. But in our coastal garden, high up in the canopy of the bay tree, this rampant climber is still flowering for all its life is worth. Our cup and saucer vine has weathered gales and several chilly nights during December. We’ve been rewarded with hundreds of greenish-white, bell-shaped flowers which quickly flushed light purple. The fragrant flowers are carried proud of glossy foliage on long stems, perfect for flower arranging.

Cobaea scandens is easily grown from seed. A single plant is sufficient to cover a large wall or pergola, coming into its own from late summer when other climbers are starting to fade. The unadulterated species has purple flowers; a white variation, Cobaea scandens f. alba has sophisticated creamy-white blooms. Cobaea flowers have a fascinating strategy for attracting pollinators. They exude a unpleasant smell when they first open: in their natural habitat this attracts pollinating bats, but in Europe these are supplanted by flies. Later the perfume evolves to become an attractive honey scent, drawing bees towards ample pollen.

An even finer flower, although harder to track down, is Cobaea pringlei a climber which produces large, white, funnel-shaped flowers. Cobaea pringlei is slightly hardier than C. scandens, regrowing from its roots in all but the most hateful winters.

So if you fancy a bit of Christmas Club Tropicana then Cobaea scandens is the climber for you. Seeds are available from most good seed merchants and can be sown from January but, watch out, you won’t be able to contain your seedlings inside for long!