Swipe left! Search for perfect plant is like the worst kind of online dating
Agnes Stevenson is sorting the squabbles, weeding out the wild and fine-tuning flower beds...and fingers crossed the plant in the picture looks as good in real life
The giant orange hyssops that I grew from seed earlier this year are now in flower and I’m very underwhelmed. It’s not the flowers that have disappointed me but the plants themselves, which are thin and weedy.
I do like to add a bit of orange to the flower beds to stop things from becoming too tasteful and there’s nothing like the fizz of citrus shades to shake up all those prissy pinks and purples but I don’t know if the hyssops are up to the job.
It occurs to me that falling for a plant you only recognise from its picture in a seed catalogue is a bit like online dating and you don’t actually know what you are getting until it turns up.
So, is it time to call a taxi and do a runner on the hyssops? Well, the jury’s still out. Maybe by the time I’ve nursed them carefully through their first winter they’ll look less frail and I can risk planting them out but my fear is they will just be swamped by all the more vigorous plants around them.
One of those vigorous growers has just been ousted. The small patch of white daisies I started with four years ago is now an invasive thug and I’ve been ruthless in weeding it out. I’ve left the clumps that grow in areas of long grass as these behave better, but once it hits the rich soil in the flower beds it can’t be trusted.
While I was digging it out I found several patches of agapanthus that had been so overwhelmed by the daisies they had made no attempt to flower but hopefully next summer they will get going again.
Near to the centre of the long border I have two giant hostas with leaves the size of dinner plates and, as the season progresses, these also swamp everything that grows around them, so I’ve learnt to surround them with plants such as hardy
geraniums that are happy to spill out from under them. Far from being a nuisance, the flat leaves of the hostas act as a foil to everything that grows around them and, as soon as the foliage dies back this autumn, I’m going to underplant them with spring bulbs, which will have come and gone before the hostas get into their stride.
This is the bit of gardening I really enjoy – digging things up, shifting them around and sorting out the squabbles between neighbours.
It’s fun to grow plants in different combinations and to try to create layers of flowers that will keep the show going throughout the season. It is a bit like being an artist, with the added complication that the hues and textures don’t behave half so well as paint and so the end result is always a bit of a surprise.
And, with the daisies no longer throwing their weight around, I now have space for new introductions. Let’s hope this time round the seed order lives up to its promise.