Sunflowers: Fake double pink and what the seed actually produced

Back in the spring I saw an ad on Facebook for pink sunflowers. The variety was said to be ‘Pink Pooh’ and, at first sight, the fully double pink flowers looked quite convincing. If it was a Photoshop job then it was well done. And that, of course, was exactly right – it was a well done Photoshop job. You can see it above.

My friend Alison Levey over at The Blackberry Garden blog checked the same Facebook ad and we decided to do a little test. Alison ordered some seed, sowed it, potted up the seedlings and then passed three of them on to me.

A few days ago Alison reported what she discovered and just over a week ago the first buds on my three plants opened. As you can see, above, each plant produced a perfectly nice, yellow flowered, single sunflower: an unbranched stem with just one flower at the top – it’s probably one of those varieties grown increasingly on a farm scale for bird seed.

But not a double pink. Are we surprised? Not really.

And it’s not just pink sunflowers. There are “rainbow” tomatoes (below) with blue, purple, puce and buttercup yellow fruits all on the same truss not to mention multicoloured tulips (also below) seen nowhere on the planet outside websites trying to sell us the doctored images.

So, in the words of every shopping and consumer rights expert across the world: “If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.” In these cases, we can scratch out the “probably”. Don’t waste your money.

An image of fake 'Rainbow' tulips offered for sale.

Sweet peas (l-r) 'Bix', 'Pink Nines' and ‘Enchanté’

Dr. Keith Hammett is the world’s leading sweet pea breeder. I’ve always been a big fan of his varieties, and he’s made so many important steps forward including integrating the most recently discovered species – the red and yellow Lathyrus belinensis - into his breeding work.

This year I trialled seven of his varieties, some of which I’ve never grown before, and I was especially pleased with four of them. Just to be clear, seed was sown in late winter, they were grown in ordinary garden conditions, on a wigwam of bamboo canes, in a corner of the cutting garden just round the corner from here at boutique florist Foxtail Lilly.

‘Bix’
This has been outstanding, not so much for its productivity but for its wonderful cream colouring with the strong rose pink picotee.

‘Enchanté’
One of the few tri-coloured sweet peas, with pale cherry red standards, white at the base, and pale mauve-blue wings opening from yellow buds. A delightful soft combination.

‘Enigma’
I was really looking forward to the vertical magenta-pink stripe through each pale pink standard but found it much less clear than I expected. I’ll give it another try next year, in better conditions.

‘Nuance’
This is a two-tone pink with darker standard and paler wings, very pretty but not as striking as I’d expected.

‘Pink Nines’
Nine flowers per stem – yes really! I loved this for the long life of each stem, provided by its eight or nine flowers. We need this in other colours.

‘Route 66’
Gorgeous, nicely frilled, pink and white bicolour that was taller and more vigorous than any other sweet pea in the cutting garden. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is similar, but bright red and white.

‘Turquoise Lagoon’
An extraordinary combination of pinkish mauve maturing into soft turquoise blue. Very pretty in posies with pinks.

I’ll definitely be growing ‘Bix', ‘Enchanté’, 'Pink Nines’ and ‘Route 66’ again, and I suspect that the others would be more effective with better treatment.

Sadly, since Brexit, Keith is unable to send seed from New Zealand to the UK. However, many of his varieties are available in the UK from English Sweet Peas and from Mr Fothergill’s. In North America try Sweet Pea Gardens.

And you can find out more about Keith’s sweet peas here.

Over at the award-winning Blackberry Garden blog, my friend Alison Levey has also been growing these sweet peas from New Zealand. Check out her report here.

• I’m still waiting for my copy of the new RHS monograph on Lathyrus by Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, botanist Greg Kenicer and Plant Heritage National Collection holder Roger Parsons. Of course, it includes sweet peas. When it finally arrives, I’ll be discussing it here… It's arrived! It looks stupendous. Review coming...

The Joy of Dahlias by Katja Staring, Linda van der Slot and Marlies Weijers

I like books. I’ve written quite a few, reviewed more and have a house full of them but sometimes the publishers just leave me baffled.

Dahlias are the flower of the moment so when I saw that The Joy of Dahlias by Katja Staring, Linda van der Slot and Marlies Weijers (Terra) was out I asked for a review copy. But, immediately, I saw that something was amiss.

The paper is not coated, slightly shiny, as it is in most books where the pictures are important. So, instead of gleaming off the page, the ink is absorbed, just a little, and the result is dull, no sparks, which wastes the original images; I’m sure they’re better than they look in the book. Presumably the uncoated absorbent paper is less expensive.

The authors, all flower growers themselves, have enlisted the help of a large number of other growers who share their dahlia wisdom, although there’s no list or index of who they are (another thumbs down for the publisher).

Authors are at the mercy of their publishers. Most published gardening authors will have a tale of a change of plan that never filters through to the writer at the keyboard, a deadline mysteriously brought forward, a title changed with no consultation. The result is that slips are missed and things end up on the page that shouldn’t.

I roared when I read this: “Since the beginning of time, the dahlia has grown as a wild plant in the highlands of the area which we now call Mexico.” Hah! “Since the beginning of time!” Oh, please. “In the beginning God created the dahlia.”?!

It’s the publisher’s job, and particularly the copy editor’s job, to tell the authors: “You can’t say that.”

And just to be clear: I’d be hugely embarrassed if some of the things I’ve sent to publishers in a mad hurry had actually made it on to the page.

There are more, but enough’s enough. It’s a very contemporary book, the design is sparky, and all the information presented in bite-sized nuggets by a wide variety of dahlia fanatics. It’s a dahlia book for the Instagram age - and that’s not a criticism at all, it’s praise.

But, again, the publisher has also not helped by pricing the book at £30. OK, you can get it for less on amazon, of course, but Discovering Dahlias by Erin Benzakein, which I reviewed here back in May, is almost exactly the same size, the pictures pop off the page, we know we can trust every word – and its publisher’s price is £18.99.

This could have been a much better book if the publisher had helped the authors as it should have done. And can we please have an index to more than just the recommended varieties?

The Joy of Dahlias by Katja Staring, Linda van der Slot and Marlies Weijers is published by Terra.

Declaration of interest: the book was supplied free of charge by the publisher.

Eastern daisy fleabane - Erigeron annuus

When I lived in Pennsylvania, there was a wild flower that popped up occasionally in open grassy places where the soil was disturbed, sometimes with native rudbeckias. Eastern daisy fleabane was a tall annual with pretty white, yellow-eyed daisy flowers, but I never thought to grow it in the garden.

Then I spotted it – Erigeron annuus - in the Special Plants catalogue, they were listing seedlings and recommending it as a cut flower. So I had to try it. And it’s been brilliant.

After a slow start it’s now reached 1.2-1.5m and it’s been flowering for many weeks. The stems are stiff, the plants branch well, but setting them out 30cm apart proved to be too close as it’s tricky to extract the cut stems from the mass of branched growth without damaging them.

The flowers last well after cutting and make an ideal foamy foil to other flowers and these dainty daisies have a neat spiralled way of opening that repays close inspection in a bouquet. Cut flower growers should give it a try and it would also be good to try in prairie-style plantings.

The Flora of North America tells me that E. annuus is an annual, and it certainly looks like one. Its close relative E. strigosus is reckoned to be an annual or biennial or short-lived perennial. We shall see. I’ll be collecting some seed, and leaving some of it to self sow, and I’ll also be a leaving a few plants to see if they last the winter and re-emerge next spring. I really do suggest you give it a go.

* A month after the above picture, yesterday I took this one - still going strong...

Erigeron annuus, still going srong a month after the first picture, in spite opf being cut for bouquets every few days.

This week is Bees’ Needs Week, an annual event coordinated by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and involving charities, businesses, conservation groups and academic institutions to raise awareness of bees and other pollinators. So what better time to remind you about this book?

I had no idea there were so many different kinds of bees! The Secret Life of Garden Bees by Jean Vernon (published by White Owl) really opened my eyes to the vast variety of these endearing and invaluable creatures. Two hundred and seventy six species in Britain alone.

Honeybees: yes, of course, I know about them. These are the ones everybody gets so worked up about. But they’re probably the ones least in need of protection - after all, there are beekeepers all over the country whose aim is to look after them. There are also the bees that burrow into the mortar in the front wall of my old stone house: yes, I know about them.

But I had no idea about, for example, the ivy bee which doesn’t emerge from its below ground nests until September when the first ivy starts to flower. Or Britain's rarest bee, the shrill carder bumblebee, known only from a few places scattered across southern Britain.

This is an eye-opening book and one thing that Jean Vernon does very well, as she guides us through a world that really is secret to most of us, is to present information that could be seen as off-puttingly technical in easy accessible language. It's crucial for writers aiming to engage readers with new and detailed material to carry them along, to present no barriers. Some resort to being superficial - but what's the point of that?

Reading The Secret Lives of Garden Bees we can absorb the information in an enjoyable way without feeling overwhelmed.

• Declaration of interest: the author is a friend, and the book was supplied free of charge by the publisher.
• A shorter version of this review appeared on Facebook in July 2020.

David Austin's English Rose James L. Austin (‘Auspike’)

The year 2018 marked the 35th anniversary of my growing David Austin’s English Roses. They sent me trial samples of Mary Rose (‘Ausmary’) and Graham Thomas (‘Ausmas’) back in 1983 and I’ve been a fan ever since, first visiting the nursery in the mid 1980s to interview David for an article and to see the breeding set up. I’ve often featured them in my work.

So I thought it would be good to mark the anniversary of the introduction of Mary Rose and Graham Thomas - still widely grown and highly popular - by growing them alongside the very latest David Austin English Rose introductions for that year and seeing how they compare.

So in April 2017, in my trial garden, I planted bare root plants of Mary Rose and Graham Thomas plus the three latest newcomers at the time - Dame Judi Dench (‘Ausquaker’), James L. Austin (‘Auspike’) and Vanessa Bell (‘Auseasel’).

You might think that planting bare root roses in April is rather late and you’d be right. But that’s when they arrived and they all grew away happily.

So, now’s the time to make an assessment. All are in same rich old cottage garden soil in the same open border amongst other shrubs and perennials and all have been treated in the same way.

The three newcomers have all made larger plants than the two oldies – clearly, this is good in some gardens and less good in others. I tried to prune them in a similar way and that’s how they’ve turned out. Here are my rankings (best to worst), for half a dozen features.

Beauty of individual flowers and clusters
James L. Austin
Graham Thomas
Dame Judi Dench
Mary Rose
Vanessa Bell

Impact from a distance
Vanessa Bell
James L. Austin
Mary Rose
Graham Thomas
Dame Judi Dench

Elegance of the maturing plant
Vanessa Bell
Mary Rose
James L. Austin
Graham Thomas
Dame Judi Dench

Appearance after a downpour
Graham Thomas
Dame Judi Dench
James L. Austin
Mary Rose
Vanessa Bell

General health
All very healthy. Only one patch of black spot, on one leaf, across all of them.

Fragrance (my sense of smell is fading, but…)
Mary Rose
Vanessa Bell
James L. Austin
Dame Judi Dench
Graham Thomas

David Austin's English Rose Vanessa Bell (‘Auseasel’).

Individually
Dame Judi Dench Beautiful buds with red tips, small and nicely formed flowers but not enough of them. Throws up occasional long shoots. Fading petals drop off neatly.

Graham Thomas A lovely rich yellow shade, long flowering and dropping its faded petals reliably. Makes a rather inelegant plant.

James L. Austin Carries the largest flowers of the five, and beautifully formed, but developing white edges to the petals as they age and it holds on top its dead petals.

Mary Rose The neatest of them all, but still elegant, and with a strong old rose fragrance even I can smell.

Vanessa Bell Outstanding in the number of flowers per head, and the soft colouring, but full opening is delayed and it retains its faded petals spoiling the effect. But it has more or less no thorns.

So, on the basis of this mini-trial, are the three 2018 varieties better than the two 1983 varieties? Perhaps a little, but it depends what you’re looking for…

David Austin's English Rose Mary Rose (‘Ausmary’)

My pick
I’d not grow Dame Judi Dench again but I’d be happy with all of the other four. But first of the five would have to be Vanessa Bell, with its prodigious flowering capacity, followed by James L. Austin for the size and individual beauty of the flowers.

British readers can check out David Austin Roses here.
American readers can check out David Austin Roses here.

David Austin's English Rose Dame Judi Dench (‘Ausquaker’)

Sambucus 'Gate In Field' with dustbin lid

Elders, Sambucus, have gone from infuriating me with their pigeon-pooped seeds popping up all over the garden –in a crack at the top of a stone wall, just out of reach, is a favourite spot - to being elite ornamental shrubs. British bred Sambucus nigra Black Lace (‘Eva’), with its reddish black, finely dissected foliage and its heads of pink flowers, must be the most popular new shrub introduction of the century.

I recently wrote a piece on developments in elders for the trade magazine Horticulture Week – subscription or free trial required – where I featured one of our top breeders, Ed Brown of Cotswold Garden Flowers.

I’d grown his ‘Chocolate Marzipan’ which is a spectacular plant growing 2-3m in a year, with huge chocolate brown leaves and huge marzipan-scented flowerheads. Huge is the word - one of the most amazing plants I’ve ever grown. I also came across one of Ed’s videos from the nursery (which now I can’t find) where he says that one of his varieties, ‘Gate In Field’, “has flowerheads the size of a dustbin lid and will grow to 14ft”.

Well, naturally, I wanted to see a flowerhead and a dustbin lid compared! So here we have it (above).

“My original aims as a breeder of Sambucus,” Ed told me, “were to breed better foliage and form and length of flowering season.

“But I have learnt that getting a new product into the commercial market takes years and new products fail for stupid reasons like space on a Danish trolley (the cart that delivers plants to garden centres). Gardeners are being deprived by all the garden centres: it all goes back to delivery week, transport, and a lack of knowledge or any willingness to take a risk.

“I tried waking the industry up ten years ago but after five years gave up and switched to colour, scent, flavour and length of flowering season.

“Sambucus has well tested antivirus properties,” Ed continued, “sambucol is sold in pharmacies to help the body fight infection. But it’s made from just one of the 147 named varieties in my Plant Heritage National Collection. It’s long overdue for the pharmaceutical industry to do more plant trials but, thanks to Brexit, the work that was being carried out between me and a Swiss company ended prematurely. So if there’s a masters student wanting work with National Collection holders, we’re here and waiting.”

Ed then gave me a few details about more of his best of his varieties.

‘Milk Chocolate’ “My first introduction, it has milk chocolate foliage and cream flowers and, given good soil, will flower until November.”

‘Milk Chocolate Orange’ “Milk chocolate leaves but with contrasting orange stems grows to 2m with all flowers presented on the top.”

‘Chocolate Marzipan’ (below) “Grows to 3m has amazing two tone foliage: black on top and mint green underneath, with almond scented flowers in June, July and August.”

‘Black Cherries’ “The darkest yet, it has the highest level of anthocyanin colour in the flowers and adds a cherry-like hint to cordial.1.5m high and very slow to reproduce needs to go into tissue culture.”

Find out more about Ed Brown’s Sambucus at Cotswold Garden Flowers.

Sambucus 'Chocolate Marzipan'

Malva (left) and Lavatera - both are now Malva.

The latest issue of the RHS magazine The Plant Review arrived recently – always a treat – and tucked away in what they call Classification Corner is the news that the genus Lavatera no longer exists – it’s been amalgamated into Malva.

Now most of us, taking a look at a Lavatera (above right) and at a Malva (above left), would wonder why they were separated in the first place. Needless to say, it’s all down to our old friend Carl Linnaeus, way back in 1753, and what Royal Horticultural Society botanist Dawn Edwards refers to as “differences in epicalyx segment fusion”.

Yes, but what on earth is the epicalyx? Well, the green calyx encloses the petals in bud, and the epicalyx refers to the little green bits that are outside the base of the calyx. Linnaeus thought that whether or not these little bits were fused together at the base (in Lavatera) or not fused at the base (as in Malva) was important.

It wasn’t long before botanists decided that Linnaeus had probably got it wrong but no one did anything about it until relatively recently. Back in 1998 molecular studies revealed that this division did not reflect the true relationship between the species grouped under Lavatera and those grouped under Malva. So, after careful deliberation – and they always deliberate long and hard these days, the RHS and botanists around the word agree - they’re all Malva.

I have to say: I can’t really disagree. And as they’re less separate than we thought, perhaps someone should try crossing them together…. Could be interesting.

• I should mention that it’s also been decided that Coleus are, indeed, Coleus. Not Solenostemon. Or Plectranthus. Which is good news all round.

Peonies is the new book by Claire Austin

It’s peony season and we have a new book on peonies to savour. Written and photographed by renowned peony expert Claire Austin - her nursery lists more peony varieties than I could count – she doesn’t just describe her choice from the thousands of varieties she’s seen and grown over the years. No, she adds the fruits of her insight derived from decades of experience. (Well – enough decades to soak up the experience but not so many decades that… I’ll stop digging.)

The book is, basically, Claire’s choice of peonies, described and illustrated. We know we can trust her choice, and there’s no tricky botanical language in the text to trip us up. In fact I think that she sat on a stool in front of each variety and simply described what she saw. The best way.

But there’s more. So, apart from giving us the description of each plant we learn, for example:
‘Bunker Hill’ “Unlike many red lactiflora blooms, the petals don’t deteriorate quickly when the flower is cut.”
‘Emma Klehm’ “A useful plant for those who want a very late-flowering variety.”
‘Little Medicine Man” has flowers that are small “but produced in great numbers on stiff red stems”.
‘Marie Lemoine’ “Sadly, wet weather can spoil the flowers.”
‘Shirley Temple’ “blooms freely in a partly shaded spot”.’

She also notes, for each variety, whether or not it needs staking and the strength of its scent and lists more than two dozen varieties that she especially recommends for cutting.

Before we come to the descriptions and illustrations that make up most of the book, we have Claire’s advice on growing peonies, a summary of their development over the centuries, and a fascinating account of her own history with these everlastingly tempting perennials.

And I’m pleased to say that she slays the myth about moving peonies: “There is a long-held but totally unfounded gardening belief that peonies cannot be moved.” Got that? “unfounded”.

“Peonies have few ailments,” Claire continues. True enough. But a cut flower growing friend asked me just a couple of days ago why her white peonies were spoiling the purity of their colour with faint red flashes. I had no idea, so I hoped Claire’s book would help. But no luck.

So I’m very happy to have this book on my shelf, to enlighten me – and to steal from – whenever I need. Just one thing: the design is, well, a little bit dull. Modern plant books, including the excellent RHS Horticultural Monograph series and Discovering Dahlias that I reviewed here recently, inspire interest partly because of the elegance of their design. I see no designer is credited on this book. Claire should think about hiring a specialist designer next time.

• An unimpeachable choice of the best varieties
• Every variety illustrated
• Descriptions based on personal experience
• Thoughtful insight into each variety’s qualities
• Readable and without reliance on botanical language
• Design could be more stylish

“Dependable peony advice from our leading expert.”

Peonies by Claire Austin is published by White Hopton Publications at £25. Order a copy from Claire Austin’s Hardy Plants.

Physocarpus Midnight ('Jonight')

I’m a big fan of Physocarpus, ninebark as they’re known in North America from the way the bark repeatedly rolls back off the maturing stems. Though why it isn’t eightbark or tenbark I really don’t know.

These are hardy as rocks, deciduous shrubs grown for their colourful foliage, their clusters of white flowers, their autumn leaf colour and, to a lesser extent, their berries.

The first to come to our attention in modern times were ‘Diablo’, with dark purple leaves, and ‘Dart’s Gold’, with bright yellow foliage – both useful shrubs. But it was when these two were crossed together to create what is known as Coppertina in North America and Diablo D’Or in Europe (its raiser’s name is ‘Mindia’) that I really started to take notice.

I was sent trial plants of this by Proven Winners, the American plant marketing company, now expanding into Europe, and year after year it was a star in my Pennsylvania garden for its foliage that opens in amber yellow and matures through orange to purple-bronze.

More recently I planted some that I didn’t know so well on my trial garden in Northamptonshire - thanks to John and Maria Jones of Hyfryd Plants in Wales for help with sourcing plants - and it’s time for a report.

But before that, I just want to mention physocarpus for cutting. America’s Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers has twice voted a physocarpus as its Cut Flower of the Year. And although it can be good to cut branches lined with flower clusters, Firebrand (below) looks ideal for that use, of those I’ve tried Midnight (top) is the best and holds its leaves well as they turn.

I find fruiting unpredictable and tough to assess because those that carry the most flowers are the ones whose flowering sprays are cut for the house. The quality of autumn leaf colour, too, seems unpredictable.

New physocarpus varieties are still being released. Two dozen are listed in the current RHS Plant Finder and we’re awaiting the results of the trial of thirty varieties at the RHS Garden at Wisley that ended in 2019. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on my own mini-trial.

All Red (‘Minalco’)
I was especially looking forward to seeing All Red mature as it was touted as being smaller, more bushy, more compact and with red-bronze foliage that was noticeably smaller than that of other varieties. That’s all true - except that after a couple of years it started to produce a succession tall, very vigorous, large-leafed shoots , with internodes more than twice as long as on All Red itself. They emerged low on the plant and would have taken over completely had I not cut them out. This one is going on the compost. Now rarely seen, rightly. Bred by Pépinières Minier in France.

Firebrand (‘Hyfbrand’)
The foliage is coppery orange in the shoot tips, maturing to dusky purple bronze with green undersides. The flower clusters, spread across 30-40cm of stem, are relatively small, but produced on short stems at every node creating a very attractive look. Pink buds open to pink-tinted white flowers, it retains more pink colouring in its flowers than others I’m growing. Bred by John and Maria Jones of Hyfryd Plants in Wales.

Lady in Red (‘Tuilad’)
Reddish copper young shoots mature to dusky greenish purple foliage, the small clusters of pink buds fade to white as the flowers open. This is similar to Coppertina, which is said to be mildew resistant although I’ve not had powdery mildew on any of mine. This can stay in its up-against-the-east-facing-fence site until I’m desperate for space, but if I were planting now I think I’d pick Coppertina. From Jonathan Tuite of Westacre Gardens in Norfolk.

Midnight (‘Jonight’) (above)
If you’re looking for the darkest foliage colour, this is the one. The leaves open in deep purple-bronze foliage with a noticeable gloss, maturing to dull bronze - almost black- and greenish bronze on the back. The vigorous growth is ideal for cutting and lasts exceptionally well. Not selected for its flowers, so the show is sparse but the rosy pink buds open to white flowers. Another from John and Maria .

Summer Moon (‘Tuimon’) (below)
More spreading in growth than my other varieties, the chartreuse-bronze new growth matures to green with pale veins and hints of bronze creating on overall blend of green and bronze tints. The flower clusters are larger than those on any of the others, and on longer stems, with the pink buds opening to white and with noticeably red anthers. Makes an effective flowering shrub, wider than high. Another from Jonathan Tuite.

Check out my previous posts about growing physocarpus in Pennsylvania.
New plants on trial: Top Shrub – Physocarpus Coppertina (2007)
Two fine Physocarpus (Ninebarks to American readers) (2009)

Physocarpus Summer Moon ('Tuimon')