Container Planting

A mixture of many attractive low-growing sedum varieties representing a wide range of foliage types and flower colours. Low maintenance, durable and interesting, grow them on walls or banks, as a ground cover or as a green roof. Sedum strut their stuff where many other plants dare not venture!

Sedum Ruben's Lizard is a low-growing sedum that has tight, rosy-green cushion of needles with reddish tips. Throughout the summer the plant is covered with many tiny, star-shaped white flowers. Drought and heat tolerant or low maintenance, whatever you want to call it, 'Lizard' takes a lot of abuse.

Sedum ussuriense is at its best in late summer and through autumn, the blue-green succulent, rounded leaves are followed by a glowing display or carmine-red flower clusters. It even pleases the eye in winter when its seed heads turn into a stage for dew drops and ice crystals.

Hugely impressive in any garden, Sedum telephium ‘Emperors Wave’ boasts succulent, blue-green foliage and masses of star-shaped flowers in glorious shades of deep pink and purple. They are popular with late season perennials and ornamental grasses. The extreme contrast in flower shape enhance each other, adding to the textures and colours of the late season garden.

Sedum spurium 'Voodoo' is a stunning little perennial groundcover for hot, sunny locations. The intense dark mahogany foliage that provides a stunning contrast to the almost neon, luminous rosy-red flowers which appear June through August.

Sedum spurium coccineum is the most robust sedum, with deep crimson blooms and bronze-green leaves. Low maintenance, durable and interesting, they enhance the appearance of green roofs, rockeries and containers. In July, dense clusters of showy crimson blooms smother the evergreen plants.

If you’re looking for a beautiful plant that thrives with virtual neglect, Sedum reflexum just might fit the bill. The small bushes spread over the ground and the foliage resembles mini spruce branches. They are at their loveliest spilling over edges of walls and rocks to create the illusion of a living waterfall.

Sedum forsterianum ‘Silver Stone’ is one of the more unusual textured species, with whorls of silver-green foliage. In late summer bright yellow star shaped flowers appear. This low-growing succulent plant grows to a height of 15 to 20cm, extremely hardy it can cope with temperatures down to minus 34°C.

Sedum album is one of the most popular forms of sedum, known for its dense foliage as it changes colour throughout the seasons. The leaves emerge a coral-salmon in spring, change to bright green in summer and then to reddish bronze with the arrival of cooler temperatures. In summer the plants explode in masses of tiny, white star-shaped flowers.

Delicate in appearance and yet very cold hardy, Sedum acre is beautiful from the first stirrings of early spring to the twilight of autumn. Hardy and very easy to grow. Started early it will form a nice dense ground cover the very first season. If the weather is favourable it will flower within six months.

The royal sister of ‘Blue Queen’, ‘Rose Queen’ is a wonderful, long-blooming cultivar with slender spires and beautiful mulberry-rose flowers, which open from dark pink buds in early and mid-summer. This tall, easy-to-grow variety with lance-shaped green leaves possess a pleasant aromatic scent.

Salvia x superba 'Blue Queen' is one of the finest Salvias we know. This plant is a spectacular source of dark, intense colour and narrow, vertical form. Masses of pencil-thin, vibrantly colourful bloom spires, so densely set that they present a solid wall of colour in the border.

Salvia verticillata 'Purple Fairy Tale' is a spectacular first year flowering perennial. The irresistible deep purple petals gather like raindrops in tiered pools to form whorled flowers. Easy to grow, it will begin to bloom just a couple of months after sowing. The plant flowers abundantly and continues right through to September

Salvia Victoria White is a companion to the more well known Victoria Blue. Flowering in less than four months from seed, it produces its white flowers from summer to autumn. Like all Salvia, it brings butterflies into the garden by the dozen, and makes a wonderful cut or dried flower.

Salvia farinacea ‘Fairy Queen’ is an attractive new variety that bears multiple spikes of bicolour blue and white flowers on dark distinctive flower stems from June to October. With a bushy, compact habit and thick stems. A small white spot on each sapphire blue flower creates the illusion of fairy dust.

Rudbeckia hirta ‘Maya’ is a fabulous award winning variety, bearing beautifully doubled golden daisies with petals so dense they almost look like pincushions. Golden yellow, with a kiss in the centre — almost like a Zinnia in appearance. An outstanding cut flower and wonderful in mixed containers.

The heavy blooming ‘Irish Eyes’ has fantastic bright yellow and gold daisies with emerald green eyes, a far cry from your typical black-eyed Susan. It is easy to grow, great for cutting and offers lots of blooms in the heat of summer. This popular ornamental is at home in wildlife gardens, cutting gardens and mixed borders.

Rudbeckia hirta 'Denver Daisy' has large, golden daisies with chocolate brown centres and marks at the base of each petal. Growing to around 75cm (30in) tall, this lovely variety performs well, is exceptionally heat tolerant and blooms for a long time in summer.

Rosularia is a rosette forming succulent that closely resemble other Crassulaceae such as Sempervivum and Echeveria. It distinguishes itself in spring time when the small green clusters change to a vibrant rich reddish tone. Rare yet hardy, they are seldom seen other than in specialist nurseries or rock garden collections.

Pulsatilla alpina subsp. alpina is a charming form, with white flowers, the outer segments flushed with bluish-purple. A favourite for collectors, they have a protracted flowering period and followed by attractive seed heads, they are showy, long-lived and reliable plants with a lengthy period of interest.