Agapanthus ‘Midnight Star’
Every so often, a plant joins my category of “top plants”. This summer it has been the turn of Agapanthus ‘Midnight Star’.
Agapanthus, with their round heads of blue or white flowers, are such valuable plants for the second half of summer, providing contrast of flower form and toning in with all kinds of colour scheme, hot or cool. Lovely as the white-flowered varieties are, blue is the colour we rely upon them for.
The fact that there are dozens of different blue-flowered varieties to choose from may be baffling to all but committed Agapanthophiles! So many of them appear to vary from one another in rather subtle details, apart from such obvious distinctions as height and shades of blue, it is hard to know which ones to go for.
We have grown ‘Midnight Star’ at Bridgemere for many years and I have always considered it outstanding in terms of reliable hardiness, the depth of its colour and sheer floriferousness. But this year, when so many have failed altogether, it seems to me to have excelled itself, with two big clumps crowded with those gorgeous blue flowers being the star attraction in our gardens this month. Its spectacular performance this summer really confirms a long held view that this is a blue Agapanthus you cannot go wrong with. Meanwhile, I have my eye on another, called ‘Jack’s Blue’, with longer, more trumpet-shaped individual flowers, of a good, rich, deep blue on taller (5ft) stems. There is always room for another good plant!
Agapanthus are South African plants and will not tolerate cold, damp soil in winter, so good drainage is essential. Just to be awkward, however, they will not thrive in soil which becomes too dry in summer either, preferring it on the moist side: so well-drained soil with a good humus content is what is required, and full sun, of course. They can create a magnificent display in large containers, which you need to keep under protection in the winter.
Note for flower arrangers, or just those who like putting flowers in vases: Agapanthus make excellent cut flowers, which will last at least a week in water. For a simple arrangement, they combine delightfully with the metallic-blue, prickly round heads of Echinops ‘Veitch’s Blue’, another brilliant cut flower.
There are so many different shades of pink. At one extreme there are the subtle, delicate, pale pinks, which blend perfectly into pastel schemes, with soft blues, mauves and silver; at the other are the vibrant, bright, assertive pinks, which create dashing and explosive contrasts with orange, scarlet, purple and golden yellow flowers in “hot” borders. 
I occasionally find myself stopped in my tracks by a plant which I thought I had known for years, but suddenly see in a new light, as if for the first time. This happened to me the other day when I spotted a bryony (a rather uncommon handsome but rampageous native plant) scrambling over a shrub in one of our borders. As I disentangled the bryony, I realised that the shrub I was liberating from its embrace, normally a dull green, had transformed itself into a solid mound of gorgeous, glossy, chocolate-purple. This was Pieris Katsura in full, sumptuous new growth. I have seen this over many Springs, but had somehow failed to register how wonderful it is. It must have been the bryony that did it! 
I didn’t make it to Chelsea this year, but was pleased to hear that one of the stars of the Telegraph’s Best in Show award winning garden was one of my top perennials, Salvia ‘Caradonna’. This plant was a hit with us at Bridgemere as soon as it appeared a few years ago. What sets it apart from the many blue perennial Salvias available nowadays is its almost black, slender, upright stems, clad with deep green leaves, bearing dark purple flowers for weeks on end. The effect is stylish, elegant and classy. 
Bleeding Heart, Dicentra spectabilis, with its brilliant rosy-pink, heart-shaped flowers and handsome foliage is one of the sensations of the spring garden, and one of the best loved of all perennials. It is equalled in beauty by the white-flowered form, ‘Alba’, once a rare plant, now readily available. They are, however, very much spring flowering plants, retiring into the background when the summer comes. Happily, there are smaller Dicentra’s, especially the newer varieties among them, which continue right through the summer. Their flowers, in scale with the size of the plant, are smaller and daintier than those of the true Bleeding Heart, held over neat mounds of lacy, blue-green foliage. ‘King of Hearts’, with rose-pink lockets, the first of this series to appear, has proved to be a top class plant, recognised as such by the Royal Horticultural Society who have bestowed the coveted Award of Garden Merit on it. 
We first had Sinocalycanthus Hartlage Wine at Bridgemere three years ago, when it was very new (and very expensive!). It was an obviously different and exciting plant, with those gorgeous, spherical maroon buds opening to subtle dusky pink flowers, with water lily-like centres of petals tipped white. The leaves too are good – large, glossy and healthy. We potted a plant up to make a display plant for the Tatton Park Show where it caused a sensation. Though its main flowering period is late spring to early summer, it always seems to produce a second “flush” in the middle of July – perfect timing for Tatton!
I have been much impressed by some new Christmas Rose hybrids, which have been completely without protection and have looked fantastic for months. ‘Candy Love’ is a hybrid between the Christmas Rose, Helleborus niger, and H.x sternii, which gives it handsome foliage, reddish-bronze stems and smoky-pink buds which turn a deep coppery-pink as they open fully (I imagine, though I have not experimented with this, that they would last well in water when cut at this stage). ‘Snow Love’ opens from pink-veined buds to a lovely fresh greenish-cream, with green centres. This one is a hybrid between H.niger and H.argutifolius (or H.corsicus, as we used to call it), from which it derives the green tinge to its flowers and a robust, vigorous habit. These will both make big clumps, flowering with great freedom over an exceptionally long period. They will also prove easier to grow than the true Christmas Rose, (which can be tricky), thriving in humus-rich, well-drained soil, in sun or light shade, with shelter from cold winds.
