The Gardenist

2 min read 2022-08-08 12:34:30

PLANT OF THE WEEK #102 Penstemon ‘Blackbird’

I’ve always been in two minds – maybe more than two – in regard to penstemons. Yes, they’re generous in bloom, and yes, they come in a good

3 min read 2022-08-02 12:33:59

I spent last week in the second-most remote community on the continent. Which must make it one of the most remote communities in the world. Besides

3 min read 2022-08-02 10:31:42

I spent last week in the second-most remote community on the continent. Which must make it one of the most remote communities in the world. Besides

2 min read 2022-07-25 16:42:01

So there are miscanthuses that fall into a ‘landscape’ category – that look fabulous en masse, or repeated about – and there are

3 min read 2022-07-19 08:18:40

One of the great ‘discoveries’ of my unwatered ‘steppe’ garden has been Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’. I’d admired it, from a distance, for

2 min read 2022-07-11 15:48:01

So while bed-bound with covid last week, I wallowed in some culture and read Jane Austen’s Emma, having heard from a reliable source that it

2 min read 2022-07-05 06:51:55

OK, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that today’s Plant of the Week has to be out of season. Once the last of the autumn leaves blows away in

2 min read 2022-06-21 09:43:29

It’s a complete mystery to me why, of 100,000+ photos of plants in my photo library, I don’t have a single decent pic of Helleborus

2 min read 2022-06-14 06:47:56

I sat to down to write this, bar-heater blaring by my legs, overlooking a scene of windswept monochrome bleakness, and turned – just for a few

3 min read 2022-05-24 09:23:17

If only there were more trees with the emphatic verticality of the Italian cypress. But there aren’t. The Italian cypress (also known as pencil

4 min read 2022-05-17 09:04:25

Elaeagnus x ebbingei is a great big brute of a shrub. At a maximum of about 5m tall by the same wide, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever want to

3 min read 2022-05-10 07:02:04

OK, I’m a bit nervous about this one. I guess it comes down to whether Plant of the Week is about raising plant awareness or whether it

3 min read 2022-05-02 16:44:36

My suggestion for plant of this week is one which holds deep significance to a country currently enduring great suffering. The war in Ukraine

3 min read 2022-04-26 08:06:47

If you’re a long-term reader of The Gardenist, you’ll know that I’m forever in two minds about evergreen grasses. Nearly everyone in a

3 min read 2022-04-19 06:21:05

Like most kids, I grew up plant-blind. But Virginia creeper, along with its relative Boston ivy, somehow broke through and made itself known to