WORDS OF WISDOM From Amateur Gardening’s historic 138-year-old archive
In this extract from AG 25 July 1970, Christopher Lloyd, of Great Dixter fame, looks at plants that keep flowering
Never without a flower Christopher Lloyd looks at plants with a long flowering season
All photographs Alamy unless otherwise credited
Perpetual cherries None of the cherries is truly perpetual, but two of them have made a brave enough stab at it to have earned the title. Prunus serrulata ‘Fudanzakura’ (the last word means continuous cherry) has also been known as Prunus serrulata f. semperflorens. In Japan it probably deserves its reputation; in the UK it can, in a mild winter and if the birds, who adore its buds, leave it alone, flower from November to April, much like the far better known P. x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’. And in the same way its buds open from pale pink to white. It is useful for cutting to bring on indoors. Of greater value as a garden plant is P. cerasus ‘Semperflorens’, a variety of the sour morello cherry. It makes a very pretty small round-topped tree and flowers from April to September. Flowers and ripe fruits may be seen together. Viburnum tomentosum [V. plicatum f. tomentosum] has given rise to the finest snowball bushes, and also to varieties like ‘Lanarth’ that are nearer to the wild plant, with fertile and sterile florets in the style of a lacecap hydrangea. I met another of this ilk for the first time last summer, but a smaller growing plant more suitable where space was restricted and flowering quite out of season, it seemed to me, 42 AMATEUR GARDENING 23 JULY 2022
The shrimp plant, Beloperone guttata, has colourful bracts
Christopher Lloyd at his Great Dixter garden
Viola odorata is a scented violet that is seldom found without a flower
The showy white flowers of the Japanese snowball Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Lanarth’
intense carmine colouring by February and is then, weather permitting, at its most remarkable. Of the humbler hardy plants, there is Exceptionally persistent A number of the hebes are Prunus serrulata never a month when I cannot find exceptionally persistent. ‘Fudanzakura’ can flower a wild primrose in flower in from November to April the surrounding woods, ‘Autumn Glory’, for particularly where the instance, gets going weeds have recently in early July, with a been coppiced. However, terrific burst of purple I come from East Sussex blossoms opening from and it is a fact that there silvery buds, and you are a great many strains can nearly always find of primroses with different something to pick from it flowering habits in different thereafter in every month localities. Those from the north up to and including the will seldom venture into bloom, following April. ‘Midsummer however you treat them, until April or Beauty’, with long lavender spikes that even May. Wild scented violets also have are sweetly scented, is much the same, while ‘Cranleighensis’, which is pale pink a pretty well non-stop season. Even in August, when your mind is furthest from in summer and autumn, develops an
until I learned that its name was V. tomentosum semperflorens.
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OMETIMES we think how gratifying it would be if our plants would just keep on flowering. Some plants do, in fact, bloom continuously; they mostly come from the tropics and need a heated greenhouse. Others that are hardy flower for sufficient months on end to earn the Latin epithet semperflorens, which means always in flower. When continuous-flowering roses were first introduced from China in the late 18th century, it was not surprising that one of them should have been named Rosa chinensis ‘Semperflorens’. This was Slater’s crimson China, a monthly rose with a truly year-round season if given high enough temperatures to keep it flowering. It was an important parent of Noisette and Bourbon roses and from them came our modern roses, including those grown under glass for year-round flowers.
