What’s In Season

Looking for reliable white/pink flowering bush for a border garden? Gaura-aka-Butterfly Bush is a good candidate. Needs full sun and well drained soil to thrive-if it’s happy, Gaura will flower profusely for the whole summer. Looks good with other cottage garden plants like Lavender. You can see Gaura flowering in our Butterfly House at present-the Monarch butterflies love it too. Colours can be white, pink and white or a darker pink. The plants can be trimmed back in Autumn and will come away again in early summer. 

Allow space for the plant show its full display over the whole season-Gaura is a great addition to any cottage garden. Pop along to West Lynn Garden soon see this flowering in our Butterfly House. 

The Iochroma in our carpark is in full flower again-when I wrote about it last year, I hadn’t realised that this particular tree actually flowers almost all year round. 

The profuse clusters of purple trumpet shaped flowers are very attractive and many bees seem to think so too.  

Indigenous to Ecuador, the tree is evergreen and now about 6 metres high, thriving in part shade and-as mentioned flowering most of the time. 

Next time you visit West Lynn Garden, take a look on the right hand side of the carpark-you’ll easily spot the purple clusters nodding in the breeze.

Toad Lily-the name just doesn’t do the plant justice.

The species name,Tricyrtis formosa, holds much more interest. A Greek  tri-for 3 and Kurt- for arched….the formosa indicates its origins-now Taiwan. Also found in China, Korea, Japan,Nepal and the Philippines. 

This well-behaved ground cover likes open shade, rich moist soil and, given the right spot, will flower profusely in late summer/autumn. It will not do well in deep shade or dry conditions. 

In full bloom at West Lynn Garden right now and just smothered in delightful, mottled, dark pink orchid-like blossoms. You need to almost kneel to really inspect the intricacy of each spray of flowers-very complex and intriguing. 

The name Toad Lily refers to the unusual spots and tiny bumps on the petals-I still prefer Tricyrtis!

Quince are from the Cydonia genus, a subtribe  to the Rosaceae family. 

Our Qince tree at West Lynn Garden is heavy with golden fruit at present and, as seen in the photograph, are rather large also. 

Being deciduous, Quince trees are quite unremarkable for most of the year. When Spring flowering begins, the tree becomes ravishingly beautiful. Well worth a special visit  to witness the masses of pink tinged blossom on every branch.   Later in the season, small green fruit are formed, many of which fall to the ground. A good number do cling on during the winds of September and gradually grow into green, oval shapes-a bit like small footballs. By March/April the quinces have reached the ripening phase. 

By now the fruit are quite big, heavy and golden. If admiring the fruit from ground level, keep  an eye out for falling fruit-they heavy!

Some visitors have never seen or heard of a Quince tree-now is your chance to set the record straight. 

Ginkgo Biloba is the sole survivor of a species known as the Ginkgoales which first appeared in the Permian period-about 300 million years ago. The species flourished through the Jurassic age, way back in the time of the dinosaurs.  We’re told that about 100 million years ago, the trees began to die out-leaving the Ginkgo Biloba variety, the sole survivor of the species-and only in China where ancient trees had survived in the grounds of temples. 

Ginkgo Biloba is now widely grown in city gardens where a temperate climate can provide a long and successful location in which to thrive. It’s not keen on strong winds but is resistant to pollution and pests. Deciduous and ideally, needs lots of uncluttered space to show off its symmetrical structure to perfection. 

Needless to say, I am a BIG fan of Ginkgo Biloba trees!