Eryngium giganteum 'Miss Willmott's ghost'

Eryngium giganteum 'Miss Willmott's ghost' is probably my 'find of the year', one of those rare plants that actually look better than the photographs in the books and catalogues! 

E. giganteum 'Miss Willmott's ghost' - "Mrs. W" to her friends!

I bought three in spring in 9cm pots, with nothing more that a shred of green leaf about the size of my fingernail showing. I planted them out and one promptly died, but the two that came up are just spectacular! They have this extraordinary combination of shape and colour; a really thrilling mix of pointy, spikey angularity and silver-grey luminosity. I find myself doing a double-take and grinning like a lunatic every time they catch my eye! The books and websites all suggest they will grow to 90-100cm, but mine have stopped at 60-75cm with a really tidy, compact shape.

My one mistake was putting them into too busy a situation. This plant needs a stage to show off on! At the very least, they need something that will provide a fairly solid, even block of colour behind them. Something dark like cotinus coggygria purpurea ('smokebush') or one of the black or purple-leaved sambucus nigra (elder) would look amazing; but a relatively even mid-dark green background, though less spectacular, would work just as well. I'm planning a clump of five of them for next year, with the elder behind them and and a deep purple salvia in front of them.

A little height quickly in a new garden...

Last year we moved to a new house, and I started work on the garden at the beginning of this year. The area I've currently got to play with is small; about 7x5 metres (22x16 feet) with most of the planting in an 'L' shaped border along two sides of the garden. Halfway through the year, what I'm really noticing is how the small space means that I have to get things absolutely right, and that the plants really have to earn their space. So six months in, how am I doing?

A big concern was how to get some height quickly without planting trees or giant shrubs that would take up too much space. I'm pleased with how three ideas out of four worked out.

Best idea of the lot was using a small, standard olive tree in a large terracotta pot (right) in the corner of the 'L' shaped bed. The tree itself is now about 120cm tall, but in the container it's over 2 metres. The pot and the (evergreen) tree looked great in the winter, and from Spring through to Autumn the pot blends really well with the surrounding plants.

Another problem was creating a visual boundary and some added privacy where our neighbours overlooked our garden from their very high front door step. A normal hedge was out; we simply don't have room to lose up to a metre off the width of the garden, even if we'd been willing to wait for it to grow. Instead we went for three phyllostachys aurea (fish-pole bamboo) in big, square containers. They gave us over 2.5 metres of instant height, the visual screening we wanted, and take up less than 50cm from front to back. Success!

Lavatera

Another success (no surprise there) was lavatera thuringiaca. I can't resist it. We bought a small plant last year and kept it over the winter in its pot. It's now late June and it's over two metres tall, it's been in flower for a month, and will keep going until well into Autumn. In some varieties, the flowers can be a bit of a washed-out mauve; we managed to find a good one, with a deeper colour that makes all the difference.

So that's the three successes. The failure? I adore verbena bonariensis ('purple top') and I planted three to grow through and around a couple of cream coloured roses. But I was kidding myself. The verbena is way too tall. It must have reached two metres or more, and towers over the roses and everything else in that part of the garden. It just looks awkward and embarassed. I'll enjoy it this year, but it won't be back...