My Life in Plants
The first plant I ever grew
I had a little home-made frame and sowed some marrow seeds in it. After recovering from a bout of mumps I was allowed outside and looked at my frame (just a piece of glass on bricks) and the seeds had germinated.
The plant that shaped the nurseryman I am today
Where I lived during the war years there were a pair of monkey puzzle trees, Araucaria
araucana in the front of the house. One day I ran indoors saying they were on fire. It turned out that the wind had got up and it was just the pollen that was blowing out of the top the trees! This fired my lifelong curiosity.
My favourite plant in the world
Japanese azaleas are available in such a variety of colours and are easy to propagate from cuttings. When they aren’t in flower they’re always in leaf, though some do shed some of their leaves to give brilliant autumn colour. They flower over a longish period and grow to different heights.
The plant that changed my life
I was collecting cuttings from Choisya ternata when I noticed a very small leaf with a silvery edge low down. I thought it might be due to starvation or variegation. I rooted the cutting, removing the top growth when it appeared and removed the sideshoots, forcing a growth from the little leaf – out came a golden shoot. Now Choisya ternata ‘Sundance’, launched in 1986, lights up gardens everywhere!
The plant that made me work the longest
Some 36 years ago, I had some plants on the nursery of Caryopteris clandonensis ‘Heavenly Blue’ and I told my son it was a hybrid. He asked what is a hybrid, and I replied he was a hybrid! I later collected seed and raised plants to show the variations that a hybrid can throw. Since then, I’ve raised thousands of seedlings and have now introduced two hardy pink varieties, namely ‘Pink Perfection’ and ‘Stephi’, named after my granddaughter. I’ve now raised a hardy, pure-white form.
The plant I am in human form The hazel, Corylus avellana. It’s hard working, stands up to knocks, is always reliable and gives rewards when it thinks fit!
The plant that I’d love to grow more of I’m very taken with the peaflowered shrub indigofera. I propagated all the indigofera and lespedeza for the recent trials at RHS Garden, Wisley and was amazed at the variety there is. They flower most of the summer and deep into autumn. Some hardly leave the ground, while others cover themselves in flowers on stems 10 or 12 feet high.
The plant I would always give as a gift Whether it’s our lovely native primrose or the wonderful colours of the Asian or European species, there’s a primula that’ll fit into any garden.