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Plant of the Day
Tuesday 29 November 2022
The half-hardy annual Panicum elegans ‘Frosted Explosion’ has seeded from a nearby front garden into the roadside providing this great display. This plant grows easily from seed needing a moist but well-drained soil in full sun or light shade.
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day
Saturday 22 October 2022
Flowering well into the autumn is the stately Nicotiana sylvestris (woodland tobacco plant, flowering tobacco, South American tobacco plant) which is a biennial, short-lived perennial or a half hardy annual in colder areas. The plant can reach up to 1.5m high with the fragrant white flowers borne on a stalk that rises from a basal rosette of large leaves.
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day
Saturday 12 October 2019
The compost heaps of Great Dixter, East Sussex, UK, had a plentiful crop of gourd cultivars (Cucurbita pepo) and winter squashes including the orange coloured Cucurbita maxima ‘Turk’s Turban’. The latter has been grown as a cultivar since at least 1820. As a keen keeper of several compost heaps I left the garden with compost heap envy!
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day
Sunday 8 September 2019
These Zinnia elegans 'Benary's Giant Lime' (youth and old age) are a half-hardy annual producing green flowers which I really like as a flower colour. They are easy to grow and the double flowers are on long sturdy stems which make them excellent cut flowers.
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day
Monday 4 November 2019
Grown from seed sown in April-May the Brassica oleracea (Acephala Group) 'Redbor’ (curly purple kale) is potentially going to provide a display and crop through the winter. Here it was looking good with the last flowers of the half-hardy annual Cosmos bipinnatus which will not survive the frosts. The Brassica leaves intensify in colour with the cold to a deep purple.
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day
Friday 20 September 2019
The late flowering Agapanthus 'Shooting Stars' (African lily) has bi-coloured flowers with a lavender-blue base, which fades into a white tip when fully open. This hardy perennial reaches about 50cm tall. Here it was flowering with containers of a tender perennial, grown as a half-hardy annual, Nemesia foetens possibly the cultivar Nemesia 'Mirabelle’ with grey-purple flowers.
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day Tuesday 21 November 2017
Grown as a half hardy annual Capsicum annuum ‘NuMex Twilight’ (chilli pepper) is surviving the late autumn protected from frosts in the glasshouse of the World Garden at the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Hyde Hall, Essex, UK. This cultivar was developed at New Mexico State University and is covered with peppers that start out white, turn purple, then move through yellow and orange, becoming red when fully ripe. The fruits produce a colourful rainbow effect on the green plant.
Jill Raggett
Plant of the Day
Friday 15 September 2017
Zinnia elegans 'Super Yoga Dark Red' provides a late season nectar stop for a red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) butterfly. These are visitors to gardens throughout the UK, the number seen depends on how many migrant butterflies reach these shores. Zinnia can be sown in a sunny, sheltered position where they are to flower once the danger of frost is over. Alternatively these half-hardy annuals can be sown under cover in individual containers in early spring. Then the growing tips can be pinched out when they are planted after the last frosts.
Jill Raggett
