my new plants

I spent part of this afternoon fussing over my newly acquired plants from the Great Dixter plant fair.  Some are destined for pots long term, others for the garden borders but I don't want to plant them out until spring.  A couple merely need planting and are sitting outside the greenhouse having received nothing more than a drink of water and a dose of admiration.

I bought Pelargonium sidioides after seeing and being instantly smitten by a grey leaved, tiny flowered deep red pelargonium in one of the pots outside the front door at Great Dixter.  Needless to say, it was not labelled.  Nothing in the garden is, Christopher Lloyd disliking the look of labels and finding that visitors stole them, moved them or trampled on things to get to them.  There is a whole anti garden label policy displayed in the shed where you pay for your plants.  So I don't know whether the Dixter pot plant was P. sidioides or something else similar, and I don't know enough about species and near species pelargoniums to know whether there is anything else that resembles P. sidioides that closely.  It doesn't matter, since once I saw that I could buy P. sidioides I was happy with that.  According to the interweb (that the young people use) it should grow quickly, make a nice mat of leaves and flower profusely.  I have moved it into a clay pot, for the look of the thing and because I think clay allows more air to the roots which is helpful with anything needing good drainage, but I only moved it up the bare minimum of pot size to convert it from square pot to round, given the time of year.

Salvia 'Love and Wishes' is so posh it has its own website.  I was instantly charmed by its rich reddish purple flowers, thought that they would go well with the fuschias by the front door, and when I read that it would be happy with shade for part of the day and made a medium sized plant it was a done deal.  It was being offered by Dyson, who are specialist salvia growers, and they introduced it to the UK at Chelsea this year, though I have now learned that it was bred in Australia.  I did check with Mr Dyson that it would over-winter happily in a pot in a frost free conservatory.  I am slightly worried by the prospect of it succumbing to fungal diseases as salvia are martyrs to botrytis, but took courage from the fact that the Salvia confertiflora bought last autumn at Kiftsgate survived last winter in the conservatory.  It got a slightly larger clay pot than its existing plastic, just to give it some space to play with over the next couple of weeks as it's still in active growth, but I didn't want it sitting in too much extra compost.  I'll move it on again in the spring, if it survives.

Erysimum 'Parrish's' was an impulse buy in that I'd not heard of it, but I knew I can grow Erysimum in our soil and thought it was a very good shade of purple, plummier than 'Bowles Mauve'.  I moved it into a somewhat bigger plastic pot since the other varieties I grow seem to fill 9 centimetre pots very quickly, with the aim of growing it on between now and next spring then taking some cuttings and planting the original specimen out.

Begonia scharfii, on the other hand, went down a couple of pot sizes.  This purchase was frankly a punt.  I fell for its big fleshy leaves, hairy on their undersides, and thought how nice it would look at the back of the conservatory, or in a shady corner just outside it in the summer months.  Visitors to the plant fair had the full run of the regular nursery, but in addition Great Dixter had a stall, and the tray of Begonia scharfii were sitting next to their stall, looking ignored.  I knew from their catalogue that they will not send begonias by mail order because they are too fragile to post, so it was a question of grabbing one when I saw it or abandoning the idea.  The girl on the stall did not seem very clear whether or not the begonia would overwinter in a frost free conservatory, saying she thought I'd be OK, but not with the authority of somebody who actually knew how they were overwintered at Dixter.  I decided that for six quid I'd risk it, and the begonia travelled all the way back on the coach tucked between my feet, because I didn't dare trust its fleshy stems and brittle leaves to the luggage hold.

When I came to move it into a clay pot lumps of compost fell away, and for an anxious moment I thought its rootball was rotting, before seeing the outline of a perfectly solid, normal pot-shaped but smaller rootball within the compost.  It had evidently been repotted very recently, maybe in an attempt to stop the plants from toppling over.  I'd noticed walking around the nursery that some groups of pots were marked as having been recently potted on, and was mildly irritated that the begonia hadn't been, but thought it would be much better off over the winter without all that extra compost sitting round its roots, and found a clay pot that fitted the actual rootball exactly.  Great Dixter's catalogue doesn't give any advice on how I'm supposed to get it through the winter, and I can't find anything else about it on the web apart from one old newspaper article by Christopher Lloyd that's equally silent on the subject of winter treatment.  I'll just have to try it and see. Begonia luxurians came through last winter in the conservatory with its stems intact, so I must be in with a chance.  B. scharfii looks so watery that rot attacking its stems and those big hairy leaves must be my biggest risk.

Penstemon 'Garnet' was another Great Dixter plant, since I thought that Dixter was very unlikely to sell mislabelled plants, and after having serious doubts about the identity of one I bought in a garden centre that was supposed to be 'Garnet' I wanted to have what I hoped was a verified 'Garnet' to compare it with.  Like the Erysimum it was moved into a somewhat but not extravagantly larger pot, to encourage it to keep growing in the greenhouse, with the intention of taking cuttings from it and planting the parent out in a border next year.

Abelia x grandiflora is not rare or exotic at all, but I knew I wanted one to go in part of the gap that will be freed up once I've taken the conifer stump out, and Great Dixter had some nice young plants for six quid.  Smallish young plants that are growing fast and haven't had time to think about getting pot bound are always a pleasure, so I thought there was no point in paying twice as much for one from a garden centre.  And at the margin I'd rather support Great Dixter than a multiple that's more interested in gas barbecues than plants.

Then I bought a kind of papyrus, said to be hardy, because I liked the shape of its seed heads and thought it would look just right outside the conservatory with the ferns, the hosta, and the huge felty leaves of Tetrapanax papyrifera 'Rex'.  That was another Dixter plant, and the label said Self Seeds, which I gathered anyway from the way they were scattered around the garden, but I thought it couldn't get up to too much mischief in the corner where I planned to put it.  It got a modestly larger clay pot.  I had better do some internet research and check whether it will be OK outside in its pot all winter.  I have twice raised true papyrus from seed, and lost it each time before discovering it really does need warmer conditions than frost free, but looking at the Papyrus vegetus scattered around the garden at Great Dixter it must be hardier than that.