Parham House

Not a bad backyard

After the sunniest April on record, we finished the month with much-needed rain and some gorgeous wild weather. Hail, thunder, and lightning danced around us as frequent showers blew across the Downs. In between those showers the light was particularly intense and rainbow-birthing, and the newly leafed countryside glowed.

HomeSunsetAWeb.jpg

Special thanks to my love, who ran out of our house to bail me out with his phone so I could take these shots after my own phone battery died. If there’s any way to my heart it’s handing me a working camera when the light is achingly perfect but just seconds from fading.

Dec. 7: Floral advent calendar: Salpinglosis sinuata

It’s not very sophisticated, nor subtle, but I love it. This is Salpinglosis sinuata, growing in the glasshouse at Parham House. It’s a bit like a cooler, more exotic-looking petunia, to which it is related. It’s common name is “painted tongues,” and I get the sense it is an bit of an old-fashioned glasshouse/bedding plant that used to be more popular than it is today. Regardless, it is fantastic in the glasshouse, and it is a plant I’d love to try. I don’t know the cultivar of this one, but many are available to grow from seed.


Dec. 2 Floral advent calendar: Allium amethystinum 'Red Mohican'

I’ve seen the new Allium amethystinum ‘Red Mohican’ described as the punk rocker of the plant world, and that’s not a bad description. Mohawk comparisons aside, when I first saw this plant in July at the Parham House annual garden weekend, what first drew me to it was its color. It is one of my favorites, an unusual deep, bricky red that reminds me of the desert Southwest.

The flowers aren’t large, being comparable in size to the much more common Allium sphaerocephalon, so I imagine it would take quite a few of these still-expensive bulbs to have much effect in a border design. I did see ‘Red Mohican’ used this way in a small section of garden at Parham, below, and I liked the effect especially next to the bronze-leafed fennel.

Because of its novelty and sophisticated color, I suspect we’ll be seeing more of ‘Red Mohican’ soon. Will it be the “it” plant of Chelsea 2019?