A Flower For Every Day

The crimson-flowered S. grabamii is the toughest of the shrubby salvias but the flowers are rather small, and so are the dark leaves, and the bush is rather thin and straggly. I have mine growing near the barton gate and it benefits by associating with a bergenia growing in front of it, with comfortable, solid leaves. Salvia candelabra grew there once too, with a good background of large woolly leaves for its long arms and soft lavender-blue flowers. Verbena venom (rigida) plays about among the stones at its feet and is always still blooming in November.

That dainty little carpeter, Pratia treadwellii, is still covering one part of itself with small white flowers, while the other half is studded with purple berries. The flowers look rather like small lobelias. I noticed it growing and flowering in the grass in Mr. Walpole's garden at Mt. Usher, near Dublin, so it would appear that it likes to escape the unyielding embrace of stones and play hide-and-seek in a lawn.

Every year I am worried because my stembergias are so late in flowering While everyone else has great patches of golden flowers all I can find are thin green buds among the strap-like leaves. The usual stembergia is S. lutea and the narrow-leaved form, S. angustifolia, is said to flower better. It has been suggested that mine may be S. sicula, which opens later and has rather smaller flowers.

By the end of November Senecio scandens is still flowering well and its small starry flowers look well against the pale green foliage It is planted next to another senecio, leucostacys, which really needs the south wall to bring it through the winter safely. The two plants grow together in delightful abandon, the silver leaves of one making a wonderful contrast for the golden flowers of the other. The soft ivory flowers of S. leucostachys are an added beauty.

The climbing senedo is also acting as shield for another tender shrub, Convolvukis cneorum, so I hope it will not be cut too drastically. The senecio really has no business at all to be in such a favoured position, but with all its obligations I think I shall have to leave it now. Before I had Coronilla &lama there, and enjoyed its wealth of yellow bloom in the winter, and I think I had a woolly idea that Senecio scandens would take its place. I have started two new coronillas against the same wall, the ordinary glaucus one and the lovely variegated form. At the moment they are well barricaded against draughts by shrubs in front and I hope will not succumb this time. I was even foolhardy enough to put a plumbago in the same bed. There were several trusses of lovely blue blossom in the summer, and since then a tangle of creepers has all but obscured it, but I hope will give it enough protection to bring it through. Convolvulus eneorum does best in poor soil, I have discovered. Rich living produces a lush plant and it often gets killed.

Gentiana sino-ornata is still flowering very happily—when the sun shines. It is not quite so happy on cold, wet days, but there are many blossoms still, and they make a wonderful show, all wide-eyed and smiling in the sunshine. I wonder if I have mastered the gentian problem at list by growing it in sunken sinks filled with peat, but I have known many gardens where they seemed perfectly content and went on for years and years, and then suddenly petered out, gardens with lime-free soil where they had nothing to grumble about, so I keep my fingers crossed when I see my gentians flowering and happy.

Some people treat Saxifraga fortunei with very great respect, but I find it likes to be treated casually. So long as it has shade, moisture and humus I think you can do anything with it. I have heard it said that it won't put up with disturbance, but I divide and replant mine whenever I fed the need of more plants. This always takes place in the winter, of course, when everything is damp, and it settles down without a whimper. I think it must be that because it is thought to be difficult this plant is not very widely grown. The only time when I have seen any signs of distress is in a long, dry summer, and then it shrivels up and will depart this life without ado unless it gets water. So far it has never seeded for me, but I have seen little plants playing round their parents in the gardens of my friends.

Seed from the late flowerers is always a problem. Nerines are pretty good and one gets a harvest most years, but belladonna lilies are not so reliable. The list and tallest of the green eryngiums, E. pandanifolium, always gives cause for anxiety. It is a plant everyone wants, so big and spiny and congested that it would be a herculean task to divide it, so seed is the answer, but when it is in full flower in the middle of November there is always worry if the seed will ripen. Also strong winds can easily snap off the tall heads of flower. They come on stems that are often and more, and are most impressive when the myriads of tiny round mushroom-coloured flowers are silhouetted against the sky.

Another plant that delays its flowering until late in the year and always seems to me at its most luxuriant in November is the "Mexican Incense Bush", Eupatorium mierantbum. The meaning of its name is "bearing minute flowers" and they last so well in water that they are sometimes used as an autumn substitute for gypsoplula. It makes a good rounded bush usually about  but taller in some districts. The pinky-white flowers come on long stalks and are sweetly -scented. In Somerset it goes through normal winters but is badly hit by very hard weather.