©Roy Lancaster Lancaster ©Roy President’s perspective – plants, people and places Roy Lancaster CBE VMH The English Garden at Chantilly. f there is one plant which urban gardens, especially yellow anthers in April, but I is guaranteed to catch those where soil-space is they are present throughout the eye of visitors to our limited if not absent, and winter as jewel-like clusters home in the often dim light it is shade tolerant too. Of of red buds contrasting of January it is Skimmia relatively slow growth, it strikingly with the foliage. japonica ‘Magic Marlot’ forms a rounded, compact This is a male form and (fig 1). This dwarf, hardy, hummock or mound (mine bears no berries. evergreen shrub has lived in is 25 x 45cm after 10 years), Not content with the its green-glazed container on clothed with the neatest of Skimmia, opposite our door our doorstep for several years leaves to 5cm long, narrow in a narrow border I grow now and never fails to please. and pointed. These are two- another small, variegated Indeed, it answers most if tone green with a distinct evergreen shrub, Daphne not all the requirements creamy-white margin. The odora ‘Rebecca’ (fig. 2). of some gardeners for a fragrant terminal flower Ultimately larger than the shrub for today’s smaller, clusters open white with Skimmia and less compact, ©Roy Lancaster Lancaster ©Roy Lancaster ©Roy Fig. 1 Skimmia japonica ‘Magic Marlot’. Fig 2 Daphne odora ‘Rebecca’. 3 it is nevertheless what I call Later that month I and our notebooks with a cracker of a plant with answered a knock on our hard-earned expertise and larger, longer, green leaves, door to find our old friend valued opinions. As always boldly margined creamy John Massey broadly on these occasions, we yellow. It flowers with me smiling and holding a bottle benefited enormously from any time from January or of wine and a tray with four the opportunity to meet February, later in a cold beautiful yellow-flowered and share with members winter; the loose clusters hellebores (fig. 3). He was our own experiences and of pale lilac flowers are staying the night with anecdotes. The whole day rose-purple in bud and us and giving one of his was well organised and a on the outside, and richly inimitable talks locally the triumph, so congratulations fragrant. This daphne too next day. The wine was to to everyone involved can be grown in a container celebrate the recent birth including, of course, the if necessary, and I find it of our first grandchildren, exhibitors in the foyer. a much brighter, more a pigeon pair. John’s talk April as usual opened reliable cultivar than the on hepaticas was a tour de the floral floodgates, and more commonly grown force with superb images yet again I was forced to ‘Aureomarginata’. and an enchanting musical abandon my attempts to While on the subject of score. Such occasions are to keep a written monthly daphnes, in February, while be cherished. record of all the plants visiting Wisley I observed In March, Sue and I flowering in my garden. a group of D. bholua attended the HPS AGM Among the prettiest is ‘Jacqueline Postill’ in full and Lecture Day organised a single, creamy-white- flower. It was a mild sunny by the Nottingham Group flowered form of the day and the flowers were and it was well worth well-known Kerria japonica attracting bees and three the drive, with lectures named ‘Albescens’ (fig. 4). Red Admirals. I cannot by John Grimshaw and Tough and hardy and remember having seen Bleddyn Wynn-Jones filling totally reliable, it brings an butterflies of any kind our heads with images of element of wild charm to visiting this daphne before. rare and must-have plants the garden with its thin, slender pea-green shoots and its graceful bridal- wreath display. It makes a loose, deciduous shrub to ©Roy Lancaster Lancaster ©Roy © Roy Lancaster Lancaster © Roy 1.5m and it pays to remove the flowering shoots from the base once they have faded, to encourage a good display the following year. Flowering sprays, when cut, provide an elegant if short-lived display indoors. My plant was a gift from a Japanese friend and I shall always be grateful to him. I visited my old friend Fig. 3 Our old friend John Massey Peter Catt at Liss Forest arrives to wet our grandchildren’s Fig. 4 Kerria japonica ‘Albescens’. Nursery near Petersfield at heads. the end of April. 4 He had recently injured a shaft of sunlight through Chinese introductions, a tree himself falling off a ladder the trees. Peter also showed peony, was flowering in a and was in some pain, but me a lovely form of the border close by. I originally he ignored the discomfort American Snowdrop tree, received it under the name to show me around his own Halesia carolina Monticola P. szechuanica, referring plantsman’s garden. I can Group, which instead of to its native province of always find something new the normal white has Sichuan. It was too simple when I visit, and on this flowers of a most delicate a name to last, and soon occasion it was an attractive pink (fig. 6). Its name was enough I heard it had been rose-pink-flowered Primula ‘Arnold Pink’ but I have yet changed to P. decomposita kisoana from Japan which he to find a commercial source (fig. 7) meaning deeply generously shared with me. of supply. divided, referring to the Nearby was a most striking In my own garden, leaf. Despite the inference herbaceous peony, Paeonia in May Epimedium of the name in English it is kavachensis (fig. 5), which is qingchengshanense and a handsome species with its regarded by some authorities E. leigongense (now E. distinct foliage and puce- as a form of P. mascula; but pseudowushanense), both pink blooms. With me it has Peter’s plant looked quite Ogisu collections from reached a height of 1.7m. distinct in its combination China, were in flower. In June my garden plant of reddish-magenta, golden- Both are worth growing for of the month was a scentless anthered flowers and its flower and foliage, but why honeysuckle Lonicera young leaves, plum-purple oh why such cumbersome ‘Mandarin’ (fig. 8), a hybrid and bloomy above, maturing names? I can hear them (L. x brownii ‘Dropmore a dark bloomy green. I was being pronounced by a Scarlet’ x L. tragophylla) quite taken with this plant, Chinese botanist but in the raised in Vancouver. It was whose beauty and sense of Anglo-Saxon tongue I think growing trained to a tripod mystery was heightened by not. Another of Ogisu’s support in the new ©Roy Lancaster Lancaster ©Roy ©Roy Lancaster Lancaster ©Roy Fig. 5 Paeonia kavachensis. Fig. 6 Peter Catt with Halesia carolina Monticola Group ‘Arnold Pink’ at Liss Forest Nursery. 5 Centenary Border at the to grow in a large pot, as October in the grounds of Sir Harold Hillier Gardens I do, placed in a shallow the Chateau de Courson to and caught visitors’ eyes dish or similar container of the south of Paris. October with its superb orange water which I can easily top 2014 saw the last of these flower clusters set in bold, up during warm periods. occasions in its original saucer-shaped, green bracts. I have it on our patio home, and in May last year Few more exotic-looking during summer, enjoying I joined my fellow judges at flowers from a hardy plant its long-stalked rounded its new home in the ‘English it would be hard to imagine. or kidney-shaped leaves. Garden’ at the Domaine de I immediately acquired one The long, thin, reddish Chantilly (fig. 10). While for my own garden. flower spikes have yet to we judges were sad to leave A couple of years ago appear on my plant. As the the Courson site, which had I saw for the first time, weather grows colder and become a home from home growing in a Cornish the leaves begin to fade and in the 25-plus years some garden, the original die, I place it in a sheltered of us have been attending, Gunnera, that is the South site to protect its rootstock we quite understood African species which against freezing or it can the need to move to a became the original (type) stand beneath a greenhouse bigger location, given the species. It is named Gunnera bench for the duration. In increasing popularity of perpensa (fig. 9) and is a sheltered garden in the what is now France’s oldest much smaller and smoother milder areas of Britain it and greatest flower show. than the giant prickly- might survive planting in Despite our fears that it leaved American species G. the muddy margin of a might not easily adapt to its manicata and G. tinctoria pond. new surroundings, we were commonly planted by lakes I have several times in delighted, after two shows, and streams in larger estates these articles mentioned the to see how well it settled in and gardens. G. perpensa is Courson Flower Show, held and was accepted by visitors small enough (up to 1m) twice a year in May and both old and new. ©Roy Lancaster Lancaster ©Roy Lancaster ©Roy Lancaster ©Roy Fig. 7 Paeonia decomposita. Fig. 8 Lonicera ‘Mandarin’ in the Fig. 9 Gunnera perpensa. new Centenary Border at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens. 6 From a British visitor’s many plants I desire; indeed, autumn before dying back. It perspective the new location I always seem to be bringing will be available here in the is far more easily accessed, them home for fellow judges UK this year.