EMBRACE DREAMY FLOATING FLOWERS

Let these summer stunners rise up and make a subtle statement in your garden

It was 25 years ago that I met two horticultural soon-to-be stalwarts. It was the build up to Hampton Court Flower Show and for the first time I chanced upon a young slip of a girl with serious horticultural credentials. She was called Carol Klein, but the other soon-to-bestalwart was Verbena bonariensis.

Cleve West had used it in a show garden, and I was instantly hooked. Skip forward to now and arguably V. bonariensis has become ubiquitous and possibly over-used, but it ignited a passion in me for floating flowers – in other words light-stemmed annual and perennial species with delicate blooms held aloft, and a soft, see-through quality.

Over the years I’ve added to my pantheon of plants with this special facet. I tend to grow them mid-border in grouped clusters with 60cm(2ft) plants in front and 1.5m (5ft) plants behind. They provide a brilliant transition and layered effect in this context. And the fact that you can see through them means their bobbing flowers associate with many blooms beyond their immediate neighbour. Equally they work well simply do ed through a border to provide colour and form continuity. Or, as I’m doing in my garden this year, they can look superb grown together to providing a massed floaty cloud of delicate intermeshed gems.

I’m achieving this effect with plants including Erigeron annuus, patrinia and

Salvia uliginosa. They all get to around 1.5m (5ft), meaning their blooms will be on the same plain. It’s sort of a giant meadow. No ma er which approach you take these airy plants provide balance and contrast to heavier foliage and flowers, bloom for months on end and generate oodles of nectar for the pollinators.

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