My plants from Exeter

The Alpine Garden Society show in Exeter is always good for three things; the immaculate and spectacular plants on the show bench, the delicious cakes on the cake stall, and the wealth of rare and interesting plants available at the plant sale.

Money is tight this year (as it is for most people), but I missed the plant fair at Tavistock a few weeks ago and haven't bought anything else so I thought I would take £25 with me. I like the challenge of working to a tight budget, leaving my cheque book at home. Providing I find one exciting plant at a plant fair I'm not disappointed, and I'm certainly not compelled to spend unnecessarily. This year's plant fair certainly gave me plenty to choose from, and I came home with a small amount of change in my pocket!

 

Not a bad little load...

I did cheat a little with my budget by taking along a plant to swap with anyone who was interested, and soon enough I had interest from Julian Sutton from Desirable Plants, who gladly swapped my form of Impatiens stenantha for one of his hybrid Epimediums. The two options given to me were very difficult to choose between, but in the end my 'plan for the future' mind kicked in and I chose Epimedium 'Winter's End'.

Epimedium 'Winter's End'

 Superficially this variety is just another nice yellow Epimedium, but the parentage gives this hybrid the potential to be a very popular garden plant. By crossing E. pinnatum and E. flavum, Julian Sutton has created a hybrid that has all of the resilience and drought tolerance of E. pinnatum while holding its flowers above the leaves where they can easily be enjoyed. Once this is better known and more widely grown this variety will become the Epimedium for dry shade. 

Nice foliage!

I also succumbed to a pot of 'unselected seedlings' from Julian's breeding program. Although these have been rejected as not making the grade I think the flowers are beautiful and that this is a lovely garden plant. 

Epimedium wushanense seedling

I'm not a massive fan of variegation but I do love plants with a 'weedy' look, so Ajuga incisa is a candidate for cultivation. For some reason this variegated form appeals to me... maybe as it grows and develops I'll find out why I like it. In the meantime it can brighten up a shady corner.

Ajuga incisa 'Bikun'

I do enjoy growing hardy Impatiens, one of the best of which is definitely I. omeiensis. I grow two clones of this species, but my breath was taken away when I saw a pot of I. omeiensis 'Pink Nerves'. Now I must say I think the name is a strange one, and so far I can't see why 'Pink Nerves' would have struck anyone as a good name for a plant. However this is a very exciting plant for a shaded garden, with beetroot-pink stems and veins, as well as the undersides of the leaves. There was no way on this earth that I was leaving without this plant, so this was my first acquisition of the day! 

Impatiens omeiana 'Pink Nerves'

I was pleased to see a larger plant of Impatiens omeiana 'Pink Nerves' in the foliage section on the show bench- it didn't win a prize, so clearly Emei Shan is not a big enough mountain in the eyes of the judges.... (Controversial opinion there!)

Impatiens omeiana 'Pink Nerves' on the showbench

I don't quite know what drew me to Impatiens insignis as a species, especially as the label says that it rarely flowers. According to Ray Morgan's monograph on the genus this species can grow to 1m tall; maybe in order to flower it needs a long season to grow to full height and set buds? Nonetheless getting this species into flower will be another project for me. At least it is fairly hardy, and the contrast between the green leaves and the purple stems looks good.

Impatiens insignis.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love my Hostas. Just to be awkward I love the very big and the very small varieties, although I will make allowances for the 'mid-sized' species. I can always rely on Tale Valley Nursery from Cullompton in Devon to tempt me with a miniature variety or two, and this year was no exception. Interesting piece of advice from them; they find that smaller Hostas dislike being waterlogged (makes sense with them being smaller than the larger, thirstier cultivars), so drainage is crucial.

Hosta 'Kabitan'

Hosta 'Thumb Nail'

Last but not least I wanted to grow a dwarf shrub in my woodland containers. One of the best selections of dwarf ericaceous shrubs I've seen for sale is on the table of Simon Bond from Gloucester. Many of his dwarf Rhododendrons and Cassiopes are simply not seen elsewhere, so a rummage through his plants yields some real treasures, but in the end I chose a nice little specimen of Kalmia polifolia. This small wiry shrub only reaches 60cm in height and has narrow dark green leaves. It is native to North America, where it grows in swamps and boggy areas. It was introduced to the UK in 1767 but is still largely unknown outside specialist collections, despite having attractive heads of pink/purple flowers in April. At £4 I couldn't really pass up on the opportunity to grow this charming species.

Kalmia polifolia bought in bud!

I took a budget of £25 with me and did come home with change. I did however cheat a little; the first Epimedium was a swap for an Impatiens I took, but also I had a very generous offer on two plants after looking after someone's stall while they had their lunch. I am extremely pleases with all of these plants and look forward to seeing them grow and develop in time.

Not pictured is the huge slice of jam sponge and the fantastic homemade biscuits which I devoured without recording for posterity! 
 
The sad thing about these shows and their plant fairs is just how precarious some plants are in cultivation. It is fairly easy to find plants that are not in the RHS Plantfinder, and to find out that one person propagates and sells one or two bits of these plants a year; if that person gives up growing for whatever reason then that plant drops out of cultivation. On the one hand this is the cycle of things- Van Gogh's painting weren't appreciated until after his death, and maybe some plants will only be truly appreciated in books and pictures after they have become extinct.