Gardens need continual editing…

September 2020

Here, in a sunny border, clumps of deeply-rooted Iris sibirica had grown so large they were almost taking over and the need to split and divide them was urgent. What a task it has been but it’s given me hard-won new space in what had become a rather dreary looking bed. Now, freshly planted and helped along by the strategic re-positioning of treasured pots it’s rich with the late season colour of salvias, dahlias and diascia.

There are some plants I couldn’t be without and Salvia ‘Amistad’ is one of them. It flowers from late spring to mid-autumn and its large purple flowers are made all the more dramatic by darkly coloured calyxes and stems. Although not always fully hardy it survived here last winter so I feel hopeful that newly introduced cultivar, Salvia ‘Amante’ with its vivid magenta flowers will do the same.

Salvia patens, shown in the largest picture, is an altogether smaller plant but equally dramatic with luminous, gentian blue flowers. 

Highly attractive to bees, butterflies and moths, all salvias thrive in sunny sites with free-draining soil and tolerate drought - Suffolk being one of the driest counties in the country what could be better than that!