a question of light

It's remarkable what a difference light levels can make to the colour of some foliage.  I had three sedum cuttings in the greenhouse, rooted and beginning to straggle in their pots, begging to be planted out.  The labels said simply Back of long bed, where I have an odd sedum and had obviously not bothered to go inside and check its name when snipping a few shoot tips off to yield more plants so that I could bulk it up into a more definite group.  One sedum doesn't go very far in a garden setting, in anything except the tiniest of gardens.

Except that the sedum at the back of the long bed has leaves of a rich, dark purple.  I knew that without going and looking at it, and this trio were a muted greenish grey.  On the other hand, I thought the labels were probably correct.  I wouldn't invent the description Back of long bed unless that was where I'd got them from, and I hadn't dropped a tray of cuttings or done anything to make me mix the labels up.  It is quite shady in the greenhouse, probably too shady as the hedge has grown up, though I've been glad of the protection in the recent heatwave, and the sedum cuttings were on a middle shelf of the aluminium staging, which shaded them further.  I could only guess that the low light levels had affected their colour.  Accordingly I planted the three grey stragglers out alongside their putative parent, and within a few days their leaves had turned the same plummy shade.  The variety is 'Purple Emperor', by the way.  I looked it up, and after having to think about it will probably remember it, at least for a bit.

I have recently bought three low growing varieties for the railway garden, a greenish yellow affair with very solid stems from Beth Chatto, and two fragile and fleshy ones by mail order, one rusty red and the other bright yellow.  Their supplier warned on the website that they were almost impossible to pack so that pieces didn't fall off in transit, but customers shouldn't worry, just pot the broken pieces up and they would make extra plants.  I followed their advice, taking a few extra sections off for luck, and sliced half a dozen small cuttings from the Chatto plant before planting that out.  As I said, one sedum doesn't go very far in a garden setting.