JEARRARD'S HERBAL
Thats enough introduction - on with the plants!
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... out in the garden.
29th June 2025
Hydrangea macrophylla 'Love You Kiss' .
I have been away for a few days this week buying plants rather recklessly. It has been hot, I can't water in the garden
, so they will have to stay in pots for now. It was reckless/I got some lovely things/it was reckless.
While I was away the garden sweltered in the early summer heat but the weather has turned heavy and overcast. Rain would be very pleasant.
Not essential but very pleasant. The ground is wet enough to mean that the grass needs cutting and its hot enough to mean that I am hiding indoors writing
rather than doing it. While I was away I had assumed that the garden had slipped into the languid torpor of summer but I was wrong.
Hemerocallis and Hydrangea have leapt to the fore.
Hydrangea macrophylla 'Love You Kiss' is well suited to the modern world. I can't decide if the name is a piece of moronic, egotistical buffoonery
or a rare moment of insightful genius. I have been growing it for a decade and I'm still not sure. It's looking fabulous now, bright with the first flush
of enthusiastic flower. I want to look down on the name with sober superiority but it's a stunningly beautiful plant and I do 'Love You Kiss'.
Is that genius?
29th June 2025
Clivia gardenii .
In the greenhouse the last flowers of Clivia miniata have faded. Last week I was still trying to pollinate them, hoping for a last delicate touch of pollen
on the fragile blooms. I had misjudged the situation. I touched the last petals and the flowers fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes off the back of a tractor.
It was emphatically final.
In their place I have a spike on Clivia gardenii. I would like to make the hybrid between the two species but I can't. Plenty of other people have done it but I've never had the two in flower at the same time.
I have to console myself by growing other peoples seed. It's good, but it's not the same.
This is a particularly good form of the species with a strong flower scape and attractive foliage. It stands out for a few weeks in flower and then it stands out for the rest of the year in leaf.
It's one of those plants that have presence. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be overjoyed if it was variegated as well but it would have lost something in the process.
29th June 2025
Lomatia ferruginea .
There is a row of camellias along the front hedge and then in the middle of them I planted Lomatia ferruginea. I don't know why, I don't think it
made any sense at the time and I haven't made sense of it since. My old and much loved Lomatia was dying on the other side of the garden
and this one was planted in a panic lest I was left bereft. I think it was a sort of frantic solace.
It has been a good thing. After a long spring of flowers the camellias have finally reclaimed greenness and the Lomatia is the brightest thing in the row.
I have a Stewartia and a Lomatia and they are both precious things for this season. I should probably plant more Lomatia but it's one of those jobs that
requires a reckless spree at the wrong time.
This Lomatia is getting old. It is flowering profusely but looking a bit bare. I should get on and plant another somewhere before I am gripped with panic.
29th June 2025
Hemerocallis 'Pink Lady'.
I often wonder why I grow Hemerocallis. It's one of those vague philosophical speculations. I wonder why I don't like olives, is there a god, you know the sort of thing.
The ideas you float in a warm bath. When Hemerocallis are good they are very good and they are always very practical. On the down side, many of them are very similar.
I have a collection of old varieties that were bred in the era before Hemerocallis discovered colour. They do yellow and buff-pink quite thoroughly
but that is the limit of their ambition.
I was walking through the garden admiring them charitably when I was stopped in my tracks by 'Pink Lady'. She has never been this good before, I doubt she will be this good again,
but this morning I realised why I grew her. Time and place and circumstances have to be taken into account and it has taken her forty years to get there
but for today she is the best thing in the garden.
To find particular groups of plants I grow, click on the genus name in the table above. Click on the "Index" box at the top of the page for the full list.
I have a lot of good intentions when it comes to updating this site, and I try to keep a note
about what is going on, if you are interested.
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