April

Sporobolus displays a magnificent fountain of fine textured, emerald-green leaves which develop rich shades of reddish-gold or deep orange in the autumn, but the great joy of this plant is that it produces a great cloudy haze of tiny flower heads. Numerous stalks with delicate, open panicles shoot up and over the clump.

Spilanthes acmella is a unique and versatile plant that will add texture and interest to your garden. Used by herbalists, the pretty yellow and red cone-shaped flowers and leaves have properties similar to Echinacea and has numbing properties when the leaves and flowers are chewed.

Solidago canadensis 'Golden Baby' is an easy to grow hardy perennial that bears flat-topped clusters of golden-yellow plumes. Growing to around 60cm tall they are perfect for borders or containers and provide end-of-season colour. Given an early sowing they will bloom in their first year.

Setaria italica Red Jewel is a rarely-offered variety of annual grass with intensely coloured burgundy red foliage and dramatic foxtail-shaped flower heads. Suitable for growing in the garden or in containers the dark foliage is a great contrast in the garden or the vase.

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.

Our native Figwort is one of the most prolific nectar producers in the plant world, the long-lasting flowers attract more pollinators than any other plant around. The flowers, similar to tiny snapdragons ripen into egg-shaped seed pods, which are just the perfect bouquet filler for interest and movement!

The Fama series is well known for its particularly large flowers that are held on long, strong stems. Beloved by flower arrangers, they are considered to be best strain for cutting. This perennial form of Scabiosa are very easy to grow and will flower in their first year from an early sowing.

'Fama' is a most elegant flower. With long stems and intense blue blooms, it is the largest flowering and most uniform strain of the Blue Pincushion. They mature into dense tufts of lance shaped, grey-green leaves from which arise a beautiful display of intense lilac-blue flowers each with a silvery centre.

This clump-forming plant produces pleasantly fragrant pincushion flowers when newly opened. Delicate white petals surround a domed, central cushion, and as the flowers mature, tiny white stamens emerge adding yet another beautiful detail. The flowers have the most delicious sweet perfume reminiscent of honey and marshmallows.

A prodigious bloomer and a tough, hardy garden performer Scabiosa atropurpurea grows quickly and is fast to flower. Rose-pink petals surround a domed, dark centred cushion, this invaluable plant will attract many butterflies and bees to the garden and would look as happy in a wildflower meadow as in a manicured border.

Scabiosa atropurpurea is one of the longest-flowering and most glamorous of flowers that you can grow from seed. Easy to grow and fast to flower, this invaluable plant will attract many butterflies and bees to the garden and the long, straight stems will supply you with cut flowers throughout the season.

Boasting the most desirable of deep blue flowers, Scabiosa ‘Oxford Blue’ is a reselected form that stands out from other varieties. The large, domed, dark centred cushions with contrasting white 'pins', bob atop strong stems. A prodigious bloomer, they will supply you with excellent cut flowers.

Saxifraga x arendsii 'Purple Robe' are compact, free-flowering, and easily raised from seed. These charming perennials quickly form an evergreen verdant mat. Excellent as alpine plants for a rockery or trough, use them spilling over low walls, as a path edging or green roof.

Cleanliness is next to godliness even in history. For centuries Saponaria officinalis has helped keep us clean while providing a little loveliness in our gardens. The flowers are an important nectar source and emit a pleasant and intriguing clove-like scent, seducing both night moths and butterfly species.

Santolina, commonly known as Lavender Cotton is a small shrub with soft, woolly, finely divided foliage, that make neat, rounded bushes. They are valuable for mass planting, ideal for knot gardens and small hedging around herb gardens etc. It will stand any amount of clipping and shaping - a perfect plant for control freaks.

This Japanese species of Burnet has infiltrated our psyche and somehow manipulated us so that we can find no fault with this most refined of perennials. Flowering in the first half of summer, the highly tactile flowers float like dainty ghosts at the tips of their slender stems.

Sanguisorba officinalis is a native of Europe and an old-world herb that is currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity thanks to the revival of interest in perennial gardens and naturalised form of planting. Perfect for natural style planting schemes, it looks right at home in a swaying sea of grasses.

Sanguisorba menziesii instantly catches the eye in the garden. With dense clusters of deep red, fat wiggly caterpillar shaped flowers and blue-green rounded leaves on gently arching stems, the colouring harmonises beautifully together.

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