Plant Advice Blog

Geums are colourful, cheerful and easy-to-grow. The flowers remind me of the strawberry plant; pretty and simply shaped, some produce dangling cup-shaped bells while others raise their heads revea...

(Hardy geranium) Indispensable, easy to grow and often long-flowering, what more does any gardener want from a plant? We are, of course, talking about hardy geraniums as opposed to the brightly col...

Heleniums are also known as Sneezeweed, a name that refers to the unfounded ability to cause hay fever. They seem to have been largely unknown as a garden plant before the end of the 19th century, ...

This easy-to-grow, extremely tolerant group of plants produces lots of colourful flowers and for those who are just venturing into gardening or have little time Hemerocallis (Daylilies) require alm...

(Bistort or Knotweed) Persicaria are handsome, carefree plants that can be divided into two - ones that are big and ones that are small.

(Cinquefoil) Distinctly different to the popular shrubby potentillas, the flowers of herbaceous kinds (these are the none woody types) look very similar. Simple and pretty, unlike their shrubby cou...

Hardy and easy to grow, Pulmonarias have been grown in gardens for centuries and as a result have many common names. The most familiar is ‘Lungwort’ which refers to an old assumption that it was a ...

(Burnets) These are not the sort of plant that immediately leaps into the mind when considering plants for the garden, which is a shame because these tolerant, long-flowering hardy perennials marve...

Salvias can be the most useful hardy plants to use in a border of mixed perennials. Loved by bees and all flying insects, they belong to a family more commonly known as Sage, to which the herb Rose...

(Ice plant) Sedum, in my opinion, are amongst the most garden worthy perennials. I am referring to the big border types that tend to be the upright, not the little alpine sedums that form very shor...

Irises are beautiful, often flamboyant plants that are easy to grow given the right place. There are three types of irises; ones with beards, ones without beards and ones that grow from bulbs.

Bearded irises are the irises with large glamorous flowers that have a caterpillar of hairs on the falls (lower petals), and a large rhizome at the base of the leaves. All types of bearded irises h...