A few days ago I discussed Britain’s Favourite Perennials, the best selling individual genera as evidenced by sales at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Plant Centre at Wisley in Surrey. And I compared the current list with the Top Ten from three years ago. Today, let’s do the same for individual varieties.

So this is the current Top Ten of individual perennials sold at the Wisley Plant Centre. There are far more comings and goings in the last three years than there were with individual genera:

10 Lithodora diffusa ‘Heavenly Blue' – Up quite a few places from three years ago, it’s been around for ever.
9 Geranium Rozanne (‘Gerwat’) – Number six three years ago, this superb plant for ground cover or containers has been overtaken by both new and old favourites.
8 Primula vialii – The triumph of hope over experience! So enticing in flower in the plant centre but difficult to keep going from year to year so people just go back and buy it again.
7 Heuchera ‘Peach Flambé’ - A new colour in heucheras, these vibrant colours are supplanting those in darker shades.
6 Scabiosa ‘Pink Mist’ – Increased interest in attracting butterflies has surely helped this pretty plant enter the Top Ten.
5 Verbena bonariensis – Amazingly topped the chart three years ago, now slipped but still essential to so many gardeners. A white form would take the country by storm. Anyone ever seen one?
4 Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ – Slipped from number three, but its very long flower season and good foliage still create demand. Technically a shrub but so often, strangely, classified as a perennial.
3 Gaura lindheimeri Cherry Brandy (‘Gauchebra’) – Like a much improved version of the old favourite ‘Siskiyou Pink’. Three years ago there were three gauras in the top twenty, now there’s just this one in the top twenty five.
2 Heuchera ‘Georgia Peach’ – Unique colouring, looks great in a pot on the sales bench and in a pot on the patio.
1 Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’ – introduced as long ago as 1985, missing from the Top Ten (and the Top Twenty) three years ago – and now back on top. In 2000, 'Butterfly Blue' was also voted Perennial Plant of the Year in the United States.

On the other hand, dropped out of the Top Ten over the last three years are:
Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra’, formerly Number Two, which has now vanished from the top twenty five;
Primula vulgaris, the British native primrose, formerly number four but still in the top twenty;
Erigeron karvinskianus, number five three years ago and not now even in the top twenty five;
Helleborus Ashwood Garden Hybrids has also vanished from the top twenty five;
Delphinium ‘Blue Butterfly’, also gone from the top twenty five;
Heuchera ‘Plum Puddin’’, also gone from the top twenty five;
Gaura lindheimeri has also gone from the top twenty five, but been replaced by a cultivar.

Thank you again to Malcolm Berry, Head of Buying at the RHS Plant Centres at Wisley in Surrey, Rosemoor in Devon, Harlow Carr in Yorkshire and Hyde Hall in Essex, for getting these fascinating figures together for me.

When the British version of my Encyclopedia of Perennials came out two and a half years ago, I did some lectures entitled Britain’s Favourite Perennials featuring the Top Ten perennials in Britain.

But how did I decide which were the Top Ten, and in what order? Well, I asked the Head of Buying at the foremost plant centre in the country, at the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley in Surrey, to tell me what his best sellers were in the previous year – that seemed a pretty good guide.

Well, I’ll again be lecturing on the same subject later this year so I asked him to give me his most recent figures and today I’ll let you into the secret. First with the best selling genera, and next time with the best selling individual varieties. So here goes. American readers will notice which two plants are not in the Top Ten:
10 New at Number Ten – Dianthus. Not even in the Top Twenty three years ago, and with no individual varieties in the top twenty five, I suspect that the recent flood of prolific dwarf types from Whetman Pinks accounts for this increase in popularity.
9 Same position as last year – Echinacea. The appeal of all the new colours and flower forms is balanced by the fact that many are proving more difficult to get through the winter than we’d like.
8 Down one place – Penstemon. Slipping from seventh to eighth place, but with a pretty small drop in actual sales, penstemon remain popular for their long season of dependable colour.
7 In from nowhere – Salvia. Mysteriously absent from even the Top Twenty last time, this is a case where enthusiastic articles in The Garden, the members’ magazine for the RHS, may have encouraged demand.
6 Down from Number Three this year – Euphorbia. I suspect that this drop may be the result of heavy promotion of new variegated varieties not being matched by their quality and longevity in the garden.
5 Same as last year – Iris. The vast variety of types allows changes in trends to be picked up by one kind of iris as another becomes less fashionable.
4 Roaring up the charts – Agapanthus. Our changing climate (allowing gardeners in more parts of the country to grow more varieties), the increasing popularity of growing perennials in containers and some very active specialist nurseries all helped boost enthusiasm for agapanthus.
3 Down one place – Helleborus. A small drop in sales numbers, but it’s more the huge rise in sales of the new Number Two plant the pushes them lower.
2 Almost 40% up in sales – Heuchera. Placed fourth three years ago, the continuing stream of good new varieties, with two in the top ten of individual best sellers, solidifies enthusiasm for these superb foliage and flowering plants.

1 And still at Number One of the best selling perennials, but only just – Geranium. The lead has shrunk so much that Geranium is now only 0.22% ahead of Heuchera while three years ago it as 13% ahead of Helleborus. But their versatility, easygoing nature, and the introduction of good new varieties keep them at the top.

And that's right, North American readers - no Hosta and no Hemerocallis.

Next time I’ll look at the best selling individual perennial varieties… There’s some surprises there to.

Thank you to Malcolm Berry, Head of Buying at the RHS Plant Centres at Wisley in Surrey, Rosemoor in Devon, Harlow Carr in Yorkshire and Hyde Hall in Essex, for getting these fascinating figures together for me.

Over on the RHS website I have another blog devoted specifically to new plants. So I recent sent out a circular reminding nurseries to tell me about their new introductions and received a reply from one Britain’s top rose nurseries telling me about their three new roses. It was interesting – but mainly for the wrong reasons.

The first of the three new roses they told me about was in fact introduced in 2005 – not exactly new.

The second rose, which was launched at this year’s Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, is named for Britain’s popular TV gardener Chris Beardshaw who asks that £2.50 from the sale of each plant be donated to Britain’s lifeboat service – excellent. Unfortunately the press release about the rose contains the magnificent line: “Chris Beardshaw has long been a favourite of scented roses.” Oh, those scented roses - they just love that Chris Beardshaw!

The press release on the third rose, ‘Harrogate’, was mostly about how the rose had failed to bloom in time to be launched at the Harrogate Spring Flower Show in Yorkshire and expecting that it would be flowering for the Harrogate Autumn Show in September.

None of these points really encourage gardening journalists to write about these “new” roses.

And then there are the pictures that came with the write-ups. For the 2005 ‘Coronation Street’ rose, the picture shows two stars from the long-running British soap holding a small posy of the rose. Excuse me – we’re gardeners! We like to see the flowers not the totty.

They sent a nice snap of the ‘Chris Beardshaw’ rose (see above) – well, one flower anyway. Any chance of seeing a whole plant? In a garden?

And for the ‘Harrogate’ rose we get one of the owners of the rose nursery, a great guy, but there he is grinning enthusiastically, behind one of the flowers which didn’t open. I won't embarrass him by showing it to you. Surely this rose has flowered before… Can we see it at its peak? Can we see a whole plant doing its stuff?

OK… all three roses are getting a mention here – with two of their pictures. Over on my RHS New Plants blog the ‘Chris Beardshaw’ rose gets a mention – well-scented roses are always good and it looks gorgeous.

But think what enthusiasm could have been generated if they’d approached this in a more thoughtful way, concentrated on the qualities of the roses themselves and shown them in garden situations. And left the launch of the ‘Harrogate’ rose until September when it will surely be in flower.

And best of all they could have copied Fryers. They sent out sample plant of Lucky (’Frylucy’), the Rose of the Year for 2009 in Britain. Then we could all grow it and judge for ourselves.

Note to small UK nurseries – Rosie Harkness at Rose Tinted PR does a great job for small (and large) nurseries.

Over on the Open Register blog – “Blog with the garden retail community” – Sarah Martinez of (American) Garden Center magazine has been posting about the standardization of pot sizes for plants. She reported the opinion that standardization “would make it much easier for companies to reuse containers. Also, it would help pave the way toward more uniform recycling standards.” Seems fair to me. And any industry that uses the term “trade gallon” for a three quart pot clearly needs to get its act together.

But it would also help the consumer - of whom the two follow-up comments are noticeably dismissive. “A uniform standard would leave nothing more than price to compete on” says one commenter. So gardeners are incapable of looking at a weak plant and a healthy one, a small plant and large one, and telling the difference? And checking the price tag? No. That’s exactly how nurseries compete – on value: price and quality.

Then the follow up comment, in full agreement: “It's impossible for the consumer to compare what a 5 gallon Escallonia looks like at Home Depot compared to a 5 gallon Monrovia Escallonia.” Here’s the news: some nurseries grow good plants, some grow bad ones. Some grow both, I’ve seen both good and bad in Home Depot and from Monrovia. The consumer is not stupid – he/she’ll consider the plants and consider the prices. If they’re in the same size pots – well that makes it so much easier. Growers just seem to want to make it difficult.

We stopped in at our local Lowe's today – and the plants there were very cheap. (For British readers, Lowe’s is more or less the equivalent of a vast B&Q.)

Amongst other things we spotted a flowering dogwood, Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’. The lovely specimen in a 5 gallon pot was nearly 2m (6ft) high and priced at just $24.98 – that’s £12.55 in British money. This is too cheap, far too cheap. All the plants at Lowe's are cheap… Tempting at those prices, but actually worth more.

Now I don’t know which grower supplied Lowe's… But, in general, many people complain about the number of undocumented workers (“illegal aliens”) working in landscaping, horticulture and agriculture in the US yet because they’re on such low wages this is one of the reasons prices are so low. In fact, people complain loudly about undocumented workers in general – but still demand the cheapest possible prices. You can’t have it both ways.

Now, here’s the other side of it all. Low retail prices in any shop or nursery or garden center tends to mean low profit margins which tends to mean limited expense on technical expertise. In the same Lowe's was a batch of coreopsis labelled ‘Crème Brulée’. As you can see, the plants on offer were not ‘Crème Brulée’, the lovely cool, soft yellow form of C. verticillata (needle leaf coreopsis). The plants labeled ‘Crème Brulée’ were a much less special, brash gold form of the broader leaved C. grandiflora, perhaps ‘Elfin Gold’ – perfectly good variety, but not ‘Crème Brulée’.

So, perhaps, in the broad sense, you get what you pay for: a bargain dogwood, the wrong coreopsis – and, by the way, only one single variety of ornamental grass… grasses being just about the most popular of all perennials at the moment. And even that one ornamental grass was frost damaged – as were the acers, pieris and cherries.

What’s that quote about the price of everything and the value of nothing.

OF COURSE, instead, you can, of course, buy Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’ and the genuine Coreopsis ‘Crème Brulée’ in good local nurseries and garden centers.

Alternatively, order Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’ by mail order from Meadowbrook Nursery in North Carolina or from these four British nurseries. You can buy the genuine Coreopsis ‘Crème Brulée’ by mail order from White Flower Farm in Connecticut or from these twenty British nurseries.

So… deer are not supposed to eat hellebores. Right? Wrong.

Visiting Seneca Hill Perennials on Sunday. Ellen hornig pointed out to me two clumps of the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, in the garden with the leaves eaten off by deer. It's often said hellebores are deer resistant; this proves they're not - deer will eat them.

I have to say, however, that there are many other clumps of hellebores in the garden, mostly forms of H. x hybridus, and most of those are untouched… with the foliage mostly looking green and healthy as the snow melts and with fat clusters flower buds starting to stretch

In my experience, deer will eat just about anything if they’re hungry enough. We have a lot of deer in our woods, and outside the fence the only two things they never ever seem to eat are Pieris and hay-scented fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula). I’ve seen them eat the flowers off daffodils, they eat skunk cabbage foliage, they munch through the startling spiky needles of the blue spruces in the depths of a snowy winter.

And now it seems they eat hellebores – though I wonder how they felt afterwards.

Oh - and there were some wonderful Arum italicum forms from Ellen Hornig’s own breeding work at Seneca Hill, masses of sparkling cyclamen (like those on the right) and some very very pretty hepaticas – and a whole nursery coming to life after the winter. Check it out here.

Yes, yes… I worked in the Palm House at Kew so I should know this plant. Well, perhaps I did water it every day, but that was a long long time ago - perhaps I’ve just forgotten it. But coming across it in the new catalog from Stokes Tropicals that just arrived it really looked amazing. Strelitzia nicolai, it’s called and it’s a huge, 20ft, white-flowered version of the familiar orange Bird of Paradise. Likes the same conditions, too, so shouldn’t be too tricky to grow – if you have a conservatory big enough or if you garden in zone 10… Florida perhaps.

Then I found it on the University of British Columbia’s exceptional Botany Photo of the Day blog – with some startling pictures.

And all I can say is this:
1. Go check it out on Botany Photo of the Day blog here
2. If you’re in the US you can order a plant from Stokes Tropicals here
3. If you’re in the UK, the RHS PlantFinder lists a good number of mail order stockists here

Enough said.

Great news for shade gardeners. Three superb new evergreen epimediums bred in Britain and launched there last year are now available in the US for the first time – from Wayside Gardens. Believe me, they’re gorgeous – they really impressed me when I saw them in England last spring - and they’re tough too, hardy to zone 5. The pictures, I'm afarid, do not reveal how amazingly prolific they are. They, and more newcomers, are also available in Britain this spring from Wildside Nursery (by mail order) and Foxgrove Plants (for callers to the nursery and at RHS and Alpine Garden Society flower shows).

Bred by Robin White of Blackthorn Nursery, who created the Party Dress double hellebores, all are hybrids between evergreen species introduced from China relatively recently and chosen from thousands of seedlings resulting from carefully controlled pollinations.

All three have been chosen because they hold their flowers well clear of the foliage, they have an extended flowering season so that if the first flowers are frosted you’ll still get a good display, and all three also have attractively coloured spring leaves. They were originally created in the early 1990s and have proved their worth over many years before finally being introduced.

‘Amber Queen’ (above left), in amber peach and yellow, is a hybrid between 'Caramel', a form of E. wushanense collected in China by the celebrated Japanese botanist Mikinori Ogisu, and another of his finds, E. flavum. The result is a clump-forming plant with exquisite flowers carried in great numbers. ‘Amber Queen’ is available from Wayside Gardens in the US, and from Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants in the UK.

‘Fire Dragon’, in yellow and purple, is a prolific hybrid between E. davidii, introduced in 1985 by British botanist Martyn Rix, and E. leptorrhizum, another of Mikinori Ogisu’s introductions. ‘Fire Dragon’ is available from Wayside Gardens in the US, and from Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants in the UK.

‘Pink Elf’, in pink and purple, is an impressively prolific and strongly spreading ground covering hybrid between E. leptorrhizum and probably E. pubescens, another introduction by Mikinori Ogisu. ‘Pink Elf’is available from Wayside Gardens in the US, and from Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants in the UK.

They may look delicate but these exquisite shade lovers are tough – just be sure they’re never parched and never waterlogged. I’m really looking forward to trying them here in my ever expanding Pennsylvania shade garden.

In Britain, Wildside Nursery and Foxgrove Plants will also have stock of three new introductions from Robin White and these should be available in North America later this year. I’ll let you know when.

I've just been noting that some US nurseries are going totally digital and no longer publishing printed catalogs at all, or are ceasing to do so soon. But some of the best nurseries in Britain - like Marchants Hardy Plants whose Sedum 'Marchants Best Red' (left) was such a star in the recent RHS sedum trial - are in the opposite position: they don’t have websites (though two do have email).

Personally, I’m sure they’re missing out on good business and also, of course, continuing to use natural resources unnecessarily. These nurseries are some of the best in the country, with well-chosen, well-grown, correctly named plants, But in general small nurseries are not thriving in Britain – and it’s hard for any small business, perhaps run by just one or two people, to spend time and resources on making such a change when business is not booming.

So let’s hear it for these four fine nurseries, all run by very small but dedicated teams. Please buy their excellent plants! (Though they don’t, I’m afraid, send plants to North America.)

Goldbrook Plants – hosta specialists
Hoxne, Eye, Suffolk, IP21 5AN
Tel/Fax: 01379 668770
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Marchants Hardy Plants – snowdrops and choice perennials including grasses
2 Marchants Cottages, Mill Lane, Laughton, East Sussex, BN8 6AJ
Tel/Fax: 01323 811737
Email
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Phoenix Perennial Plants – perennials, especially late flowering types, including grasses
Paice Lane, Medstead, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5PR
Tel: 01420 560695
Fax: 01420 563640
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

Wildside Nursery – woodland plants and especially epimediums
Green Lane, Buckland Monachorum, Nr Yelverton, Devon, PL20 7NP
Tel: 01822 855755
Email
Full details in the RHS Nursery Finder here

In my last post I mentioned a couple of US nurseries which no longer produce a print catalog. Well, I forgot to mention that for Seneca Hill Perennials their 2008 catalog, being mailed in the middle of this month, will be their last printed version.

Nursery owner Ellen Hornig says on the front of the Seneca Hill Perennials website: “Global warming forces us to examine our resource use, and this is one arena in which it can be cut. We will be redesigning the website somewhat to compensate for the lack of a catalog, including adding… an archive wherein inactive entries can be kept for reference purposes.” Fine by me, just send me an email whenever the site is updated so I can take a look.

There are over 130 new additions to the catalog this year including a lovely new form of one of the best of all shade lovers, Primula sieboldii. Selected at the nursery, ‘Seneca Star’ (left) has huge, prettily dissected deep pink flowers with a white central star. Looks gorgeous. You can see all this year's newcomers here.

But don’t let one little thing that Ellen says about going totally electronic pass you by, it’s important: she’ll be adding a web archive of plants she no longer sells. This is great news! – not only for gardeners who bought plants from her years ago and need to check up on what she says about them. But for researchers, plant historians, horticultural botanists, other nurseries who might now be selling the plants - and for garden writers like me - this will develop into an invaluable resource. I wish other nurseries, especially those who introduce new and rare plants, would do the same. Thanks Ellen.

Note to British nurseries: Seneca Hill Perennials have raised and introduced some excellent new plants but most are not yet available in Britain. They would welcome the opportunity to exchange new plants with similar British nurseries.