Hardy Perennials

Anchusa italica is a wonderfully statuesque plant with vibrant, gentian blue flowers, dense foliage and lance shaped mid green leaves. 'Dropmore' is a 1905 selection that is still available today. They will thrive in a sunny border and make a great companion to rich plums and purple tones.

Japanese Anemones are among the best late summer and autumn border flowers. The flowers open from round, silk-covered buds and in summer rain, look like pearls glistening in the border. Blooming from August to late October, they help push the show into autumn and provide colour when most gardens begin to fade.

In addition to having one of the most unusual names, Antirrhinum braun-blanquetii, is also one of the few hardy perennial species of snapdragon. Named for Josias Braun-Blanquet an influential 20th century Swiss botanist it bloom the first year from seed producing numerous spikes from which delicate yellow, large snapdragon blooms appear.

Aquilegia atrata is a beautiful free flowering species that is native to the alpine meadows and forest clearings of Switzerland and Northern Europe. With many branching stems of deepest coloured, almost black flowers. This is an outstanding, highly sought species that would be a showstopper in any garden.

Native to Canada and the US in all states east of the Rockies, this superb variety is quite unlike the usual Aquilegia. Growing just twelve to eighteen inches tall, with dark-green foliage and eye-catching, scarlet and lemon-yellow flowers which hang like drifts of softly illuminated lanterns.

Aquilegia var. stellata 'Barlow Mix' is one of the really exceptional doubles forms of Aquilegia. It is the first Aquilegia series with fully double, spurless flowers. Stylish and elegant, with a graceful upright habit they grow to around 80cm tall. It produces many stems and makes an ideal cut flower.

Prized for its beautiful silvery foliage, the fine grey-white stems of Artemisia ludoviciana bear silvery-white leaves that are fragrant, fuzzy and soft. This finely textured plant adds a different element to the garden, the texture and leaf form setting them apart from those other garden plants with rather less refined foliage.

Artemisia stelleriana 'Mori's Strain' is a superior, dense, mat-forming selection. Uniquely shaped silver-white felted leaves with deeply divided, rounded lobes, it forms very attractive low mounds, giving an attractive ground-hugging carpet. Its foliage makes a wonderful foil for more colourful flowering plants.

Asphodeline lutea is an easy to grow perennial that has great architectural form. The overall impression is distinctly upright, so it is good for adding vertical interest to the garden. In early summer leafy stems arise that bear dense, unbranched cylindrical spikes of gorgeous yellow, star-shaped flowers.

Aubrieta 'Hendersonii' is a vigorous variety that is smothered by rich lilac-purple flowers for several months in spring. It grows to only 10 to 15cm tall at maturity, but with a spread of around 45cm it makes a lively edging to a sunny border, growing over rock walls or placed in stonewalls.

Commonly called ‘Rock Cress’, Aubrieta is a traditional rock garden plant that is lovely spilling out of crevices, growing over rock walls or placed in stonewalls. 'Leichtlinii' forms a low cushion of leaves that is, throughout the summer months, smothered by wonderful deep-carmine flowers.

Aubrieta has long been treasured for its delightful spring show of brightly coloured flowers. ‘Whitewell Gem’ is smothered by large, intense reddish-purple flowers for several months. Lovely spilling out of crevices or over rock walls, the plants can also be used in paving with other ground hugging plants.

Ornamental Grass Briza maxima has blue green leaves and flower heads that hang like scaly little heart shaped lockets that are tinged with pink from late spring to mid summer. They make a wonderful cut flower and flowering in 10 to 12 weeks from spring sowing, they are very easy to grow to perfection.