Informal / Cottage

This hardy biennial Sage has been grown in almost every botanical sanctuary in human history and has many plus points: it grows well in poor soil resists slugs and other beasties, and doesn’t slump or need staking. It copes well in sun or light shade and the blooms are a magnet for bees and butterflies.

Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica 'Vatican White' is a choice white cultivar that is not that easy to find. A nobly architectural Sage, each of its branched stems is topped with a profusion of blossoms with brilliant white bracts. The flowers are attractive and are boosted in impact by the large petioles that surround them.

Salvia patens is undoubtedly one of the very best blue flowering plants, the large, double-lipped blossoms are one of the truest blues found in nature. 'Blue Angel' is one of the smallest of the 'Gentian Sages', there is little else that can compete with the richness of its colour.

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.

Venerating a former plant curator at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland, 'Ron McBeath' is a beautiful new semi-dwarf cultivar. This diminutive potentilla repeat-flowers for months, sending up wands of rosy carmine flowers even in shade. It outlasts other potentillas by far.

Potentilla 'Helen Jane' is a beautiful new semi-dwarf cultivar that displays gorgeous crimson-eyed, bright pink flowers, with petals that are attractively crinkled just like crepe paper. Flowering over a long period, new buds open repeatedly in a long succession, from late June to September.

The physostegia has prolific dazzling tubular flower spikes which are arranged on distinctly square stems. This oddly named perennial is perfect for the middle of a mixed or herbaceous border. The flowers are on swivels that can be bent right or left on the stem - a useful feature for floral displays.

Tall garden phlox are a beauty to behold, the large, dense flower clusters, produced in abundance during summer. Phlox Hybrids Mix is a perennial, cultivated strain. The colours are wonderful, the sweetly fragrant, evening scent is captivating and they are very easy to grow.

'Sugar Stars' is a fabulous new annual Phlox variety that blooms with a confection of purple-blue and white clustered blooms. One of the most useful of annuals they flower from mid July right through to October. For spectacular display, romantic excess and sweet fragrance, they are without peer.

Clusters of blooms in a range of fashionable new colours: coffee, caramel, raspberry and cream, many with dark centres, the colours combine to create an antique appearance. Phlox 'Cherry Caramel' are uniform and have outstanding weather tolerance and will flower right through the summer until October. Leave the colour in your borders or cut regularly through summer for wonderful vase displays.

Silvery white petals are dressed in tints of blush pink that darken with age, against a darker pink eye. The blooms carry a fresh fragrance reminiscent of lilacs and make delightful cut flowers. Uniform with outstanding weather tolerance they will flower right through the summer until October. Leave the colour in your borders or cut regularly through summer for wonderful vase displays.

The Bees and Butterflies Mix of flowers is a carefully chosen range of over 30 annual flowers that are rich in both nectar and pollen that both bees and butterflies adore. They will flower within six to eight weeks and provide you with pleasure throughout the summer.

Pennyroyal is a cottage garden plant of old. This highly aromatic herb has a strong peppermint scent to its dark green leaves, even more so than other mints. With attractive whorls of lilac-blue flowers, it can be used to carpet a shady corner or make a 'lawn' smelling deliciously of peppermint.

Grown primarily for its decorative seed pods, Papaver somniferum ‘The Giant’ provides huge blooms in a multitude of colours, each with satiny petals which give way to possibly the largest of all poppy pods. Florists the world over, use the giant pods in floral decorations, either fresh with late summer flowers, or when dried.

Papaver somniferum ‘Hungarian Blue’ is a stunning new deep violet poppy that will bring rich colour and a touch of sophistication to your planting schemes all summer long. A hardy annual that is very easy to grow, plant it outside in drifts where it will cover a large area with its beautiful blooms.

A profusion of cut petals in burgundy to almost black makes 'Black Swan' a must-have flower for cottage gardens. The petals are very deeply pinnately-divided which makes it entirely different from the others, and that is the source of the variant name, laciniatum, from the Latin meaning meaning 'slashed' or 'torn into divisions'.

With their impressive variety, spectacular blooms and strange seed pods, 'Pepperbox' poppies are one of the easiest ways to add a bit of architecture and a lot of colour to your garden. The glorious, papery-textured flowers bloom in a multitude of colours, rich purples, deep reds to pale lilac-pinks.

This ancient form of cultivated poppy produces the most unusual seed pod of all poppies. The main pod is surrounded by masses of smaller pods. Primarily grown for their curious seed pods which are extremely decorative, they are much in demand for cut and dried flower arrangements.

Originally raised in the 1880's by the Rev. Wilks in his garden in Shirley near Croydon in Surrey. The flowers are often likened to tissue paper, in colours from the brightest scarlet to pure white, with all shades of pink in between and all varieties of flaked and edged flowers.