My Plant of the year

I have just acquired Mahonia eurybracteata subsp. ganpinensis 'Soft Caress' winner of the Chelsea Flower Show plant of the year 2013, so it is really too early for me to express any strong views about it. Readers of these blogs will know that I am fan of the Mahonia family, but since the spiny leaves are, unless you are weeding around them, one of the attractive features, the removal of the spines is not necessarily an advantage. This years winner was a mophead hydrangea called 'Miss Saori', but looking at the photos it is not a plant I would want, but since I cannot really grow these hydrangeas that is not a problem.  On the other hand the year that the mahonia won was also the centenary year of the RHS, and there was a competition for the plant of the Centenary. This was won by Geranium Rozanne, and if you have not already got it I strongly recommend you to go out and get, preferably at my favourite nurseryman's garden (www.unjardindevivaces.fr), though it is widely available.  It is a good blue, it starts flowering a little late in the year, but once it does it does not stop. It makes a good clump but does not travel or self seed, this unlike G.x oxonianum  Claridge Druce which can rapidly take over a garden if given half a chance. All in all almost the perfect plant.
 

I am not sure that my plant of the year is quite that. For one thing I have only had it a year. Moreover I am not aware that I ever chose to buy it, since it just appeared, perhaps arriving with another plant. And if I describe it as yet another little white daisy I am not sure that you would want to go out and buy it. But if you think Aster Monte Cassino, but one that flowers from very early summer to very late autumn this might change your mind. Or if you have already got Erigeron karvinskianus, a small white/pink daisy which will grow almost anywhere, and the drier the better, but instead of being a few centimeters high it can get to over a meter, this will give you some idea of what it is about. In fact erigeron is the clue since I am pretty certain is must be Erigeron annuus, common American name, Daisy Fleabane.  This, as the Latin name suggests, makes it an annual, or just occasionally a biannual which is perhaps a disadvantage, though it clearly selfseeds as mine has already begun to do. It seems to me that it could be used almost anywhere in the garden rather in the same way as verbena bonariensis. The latter used to be championed by none other than Christopher Lloyd, one its virtues being that because it is not a dense plant it can be planted front of border without blocking the view. And it was looking at pictures of Great Dixter, now in the obviously very capable hands of  Fergus Garrett that enabled me to identify the plant. Perhaps I should just add that despite having just popped up in my garden it seems to be quite difficult to get hold with not even Chiltern Seeds providing it.


Meanwhile autumn is in full fig with all the usual suspects - acer campestre, cornus sanguinea, and viburnum lanata to mention the most common - doing their thing. Pistacia chinensis is just beginning to turn, and yet again I would like to recommend this tree for a Gascony garden. But what I have noticed for almost the first time is Carpinus coreana. At the moment for me it is just a little bush, though one with a certain elegance as it seems to have a semi-weeping habit. But it is has just begun to turn colour - a mixture of greeny, yellowy, reds, and I have to say that it has suddenly become very eye-catching.