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    Useful garden plants – Six on Saturday 27-4-19


    April 27th, 2019 - Popular posts, Spring gardening

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    With the recent sunshine some of my more useful garden plants have gone quite mad and started spreading and growing and flowering.  I love them and am very happy for them to go as mad as they like.

    Here they are:

    One

    useful climbing garden plants

    Clematis Montana – needs a lot of space to go mad in.

    Clematis Montana rubens, possibly the variety Elizabeth or similar which is useful to cover a shed or something ugly.  Here it’s way up in my neighbour’s apple tree. If we needed to we could just cut it right down and it wouldn’t do it any harm.   The prettiest bit for us is where it cascades down the wooden ladder of pots like a pink curtain.

    Two

    Next the common forget-me-not which comes of its own accord every year.  You couldn’t get rid of it even if you wanted to.  It sets seed in autumn and flowers now.  When it’s done around the end of June I will pull it out easily and shake the seeds around before composting the plants.  And Lo, there it is again the next year.

    useful garden plant in a flower border

    A haze of blue forget-me-nots in the flower border

    Three

    Below is the spurge called Euphorbia amygdaloides Robbiae – a fancy name for such a useful garden plant that you can find on waste ground and in the dry shady places where nothing else will grow.  Many consider it a weed but here it is providing a splash of lime green in a poor soil under a huge street tree where nothing else would grow.  It just spreads and spreads and is easy to pull out if you want to control it, which I don’t.  It’s a fantastic colour to have in the Spring.

    useful garden plants in a cottage garden

    Euphorbia amygdaloides – ideal for dry shade

    Four

    The heart shaped leaves here are an Epimedium, another useful garden plant for spreading in a dry shady place.   For me the common ones are the best for ground cover and a carpet of green.  They have beautiful flowers too and are easy to buy mail order.

    useful garden plants for a London cottage garden

    Epimedium with a more dainty euphorbia behind it

    Five

    useful garden plants

    Common ivy covering the fence and climbing the tree

    Here behind the acer, covering the fence and climbing up the apple tree is possibly the most useful garden plant of all, the common ivy.  Again I couldn’t get rid of it if I wanted to.  It’s everywhere along these London back gardens and pulling it up would be a hopeless task so I am thrilled that it looks so lovely here on the fence outside the back door.  It’s great for wildlife and gives me an unplanned green wall.

    Six

    This Trachelospermum by the front door has put on a lot of growth of tiny shiny leaves this year and you can see the larger darker leaves at the base from previous years. In the summer its flowers smell of jasmine and I’m hoping it will make its way up the house to the top.  We can but hope.

    useful garden plants

    Trachelospermum climbing up the wall

    Every Saturday we bloggers show six things in our garden and this theme is curated by the Propagator so a big Thankyou to him for hosting.

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    5 comments on "Useful garden plants – Six on Saturday 27-4-19"

    1. Mala Burt says:
      27th April 2019 at 8:10 pm

      Lovely photos. I’m just getting ready to plant two yellow jasmines that I bought today to cover the new trellis. But it’s been so windy I’m going to put it off until tomorrow.

      Reply
    2. Lora Hughes says:
      28th April 2019 at 11:40 am

      You & I use the same technique for forget-me-nots only I don’t even bother shaking the seeds out. When they start to go over, out they come, but like ivy, you can never get rid of them. I love them as a backdrop for the other plants. This is my first year for jasmine & I can only hope it grows as much as yours has. At the moment, it’s pouting. Just love that acer/ivy combo.

      Reply
    3. Sophie says:
      29th April 2019 at 8:43 pm

      I love when plants are so happy they just spread and multiply! They look the best I think so I love your ivy and forget-me-nots.

      Reply
    4. Francesca says:
      21st May 2019 at 2:45 pm

      Brilliant blog post! And gorgeous photographs – especially the Clematis Montana rubens. The sunlight is so lovely in some of them too. Fingers crossed the lovely weather continues.

      Reply
      1. Julie Quinn says:
        25th May 2019 at 10:20 pm

        Thankyou Francesca for that lovely comment – I snap with my phone or ipad and the photos seem to be very good with them. So glad you enjoy the blog. Best wishes, Julie

        Reply

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