Discover plants from around the world in your own garden

British gardens are stuffed with plants collected from far-flung places, so it’s quite possible to have plants from South Africa, China, the US, Australia and Asia all in one border. As such, having a world map on the wall of the garden shed, or in the kitchen, along with some panel pins, is a fun exercise for your grandchildren.

My grandson James, aged eight, was touching my pots of agapanthus the other day when he remarked on the thickness of the petals and the rubbery stems. I explained that agapanthus comes from South Africa, which clocks far more sunshine hours than we do. I explained that thin petals would shrivel up under such strong sunshine, so some South African plants have evolved to have rubbery petals packed with lots of pigment. Never shy away from complex vocabulary. Children’s minds and memories are razor-sharp and I faced the fact long ago that my four may well be brighter than I am!

Kniphofias, crocosmias, nerines, dieramas and gladioli also come from the South African Cape, and many of these enjoy summer rainfall. Some kniphofias are pollinated by hummingbirds in the wild and, if you brush against them, nectar showers over you. I had a few sparrows on mine.

China is another great source of garden plants as it has 30,000 species, about an eighth of the world's known flora. Many magnolias, witch hazels, hydrangeas, azaleas, peonies, camellias and chrysanthemums were collected from China at the beginning of the 20th century. They tend to be primitive because certain areas of China escaped glaciation. Magnolia flowers, for instance, are beetle-pollinated because bees hadn’t yet appeared.

The strange thing is many Chinese plants have North American relatives because, before the continents drifted apart, the two were one land mass – a nice detail to inspire children. The Chinese versions are more showier than the American species in almost every case, but when the Asian and American relatives find themselves planted in the same place they produce fabulous hybrids.

One Chinese plant found in almost every British garden is Buddleja davidii, sometimes called the butterfly bush. It can attract 22 species of British butterfly and produces honey-scented nectar in August, when most larger butterflies are about. Peacocks, red admirals and small tortoiseshells adore it, but you might see painted ladies, too, and these migrants will have arrived on a warm wind from the Continent.

In autumn you’re almost bound to have Michaelmas daisies and these plants have a huge range stretching through North America, through Europe, into Asia with some coming from South Africa. If you’re unsure which is which, look up the plant on the internet, adding “native to” in the search wording.

Asters are daisies, corruptions of “day’s eye”, so they need a bright position. September-flowering New England asters, now called Symphyotrichum novae-angliae after a botanical shuffle, come from North America. They are very easy to grow, and their mainly pink and purple flowers, borne on tall, woody stems, are also highly attractive to butterflies. Other North American plants include echinaceas, heleniums, border phloxes, heliopsis and goldenrod.

Plants from South America play a huge role as summer fades because they’ve evolved in parts of South America close to the equator, where days and nights are evenly balanced in length. However temperatures vary greatly there and nights are far colder than days. Many salvias, all dahlias, many penstemons, alstroemerias, fuchsias, heliotrope, morning glory and cosmos all hail from that part of the world and come into their own later in the year.

If you can, also teach your grandchildren colourful stories about the brave, young plant hunters who went into the unknown to collect all these plants. Most died young – the unfortunate David Douglas (1799 -1834) was gored to death by a bull in Hawaii, and Reginald Farrer (1880-1920) died of pneumonia on the Burmese/Chinese frontier. There were tiger attacks and murders, too.

How Author Charlotte Mendelson Transformed Her Patio Into A Garden Larder

If you are a frustrated enthusiast-in-waiting, with only a tiny growing space, or nothing at all; if other people’s gardens, let alone gardening books, intimidate you; or if your only interest in plants is in eating them, you are not alone. This is my confession: my comically small town garden, a mere six square metres of urban soil and a few pots, is not a scented idyll of rambling roses, or an elegant, if overstyled, space in which to drink prosecco. It is a larder in which I grow more than 100 things to eat, including, in an ordinary year, eight or nine types of tomato; five varieties of kale; three kinds of raspberry, red and gold; various sorrels; globe, Jerusalem and Chinese artichokes; 10 kinds of lettuce and chicory, and another 10 of Asian greens; seven or eight types of climbing bean, mostly Italian; about 50 herbs and a few flowers, all edible. I make salads with 20 or 30 different leaves; and I harvest, sometimes by the teaspoonful, juneberries, wild strawberries, tame strawberries, blackberries, wineberries, blueberries, loganberries, gooseberries, cherries, grapes, rhubarb, apples, figs, quinces and every conceivable currant.

With variable success, and modest yields, this minute area is a wildly uneconomical experiment in extreme allotmenteering – a city jungle, green and bountiful, combining edible cultivation with natural beauty but, sadly, little room to sit. Yes, I do mind that there is no space for a nut tree, or just a couple of small sheep, but, despite this, it is a source of infinite happiness and deep peace. How could it not be? Try this whitecurrant. Look at the way the evening sunlight dapples the bean leaves. Listen to the hum of all those bees. Visitors tend to laugh. It looks completely bonkers, yet I am in love with it.

I didn’t mean to become an edible gardener. One minute, I had acquired a garden full of happy shrubbery and ardent ground cover, easy to tend, a pleasure to look upon; a few months later, I was tearing most of it out and, despite total ignorance, laboriously raising from seed dozens of things I wanted to eat.

Here’s a little of what I’ve learned:

The perils of containers

Around this time of year, what container-grower is not moved almost to tears by her folly? I have more than 70 pots, excluding all the temporary seedling homes, the 10 succulents and house plants holidaying outside, and the 20 containers at the front.

Watering is a delicate process, which non-gardeners fail to understand. “Why,” ask the unwary, “not save yourself some time? Give them a going-over with the hosepipe and let them get on with it? Treat them mean!”

Containers dry out so quickly. Only with a watering can one ensure that the water truly reaches the roots, instead of pooling like quicksilver on the dusty soil surface before trickling over the lip of the container and filling the saucer, convincing the careless locum gardener that the plant has drunk its fill.

Proper, individual watering is like a home visit by a kindly family doctor: is all well? Are there interesting sicknesses: magnesium issues? A problem with boron? How are they in themselves? And so watering even my laughably tiny garden is a slow, but delicious-smelling, process. When I can no longer lug a watering can, I will totter outside with a milk bottle, a mug, a thimble-full. It is a chore, but I could not live without those whiffs of cool mint and spicy tomato leaves. The garden and I are keeping each other alive.

The joy of tomatoes

I love my tomato plants, a little too much. In the infinitely seductive world of vegetables, they have rare power. Merely their names are enough to quicken the pulse: ‘Merveilles des Marchés’, ‘Black Opal’, ‘Harbinger’, ‘Cherokee Purple’, ‘Indigo Beauty’, ‘Moonglow’, ‘Bloody Butcher’. Those of us who are vulnerable to a really good name can be manipulated mercilessly; we’d buy ping-pong balls if the right noun and colour were combined.

Part of the joy of tomato-growing is that one’s work is never done. This is why I prefer the varieties that grow as vines or cordons, not bush tomatoes, the drearily named determinates, which quickly become a thicket of criss-crossing stems. A cordon requires effort, and plenty of it: planting the seedling deeply in its pot to encourage opportunistic roots; staking it gently; hand-pollinating every last flower; pinching out the side shoots. The smell is glorious; the prospect of warm, home-grown fruit, fragrant and magnificently showy-offy, is irresistible.

What to grow when you can’t grow lemons

Lemon balm is almost the perfect plant: fragrant, edible, adaptable, easy to grow. Unfortunately, it is also revolting. Why does no one admit this? There is something unspeakable in its scent: a syrupy sweetness beside the tang, artificial as furniture polish or car sweets. Its taste is worse: like a squirt of bathroom-freshener. It is vile. Treat it as a weed and rip it out.

Lemon thyme: every year you disappoint me. Why do we keep pretending you’ll stick around? You make these promises and I keep trying to please you: more grit, less water, less fuss. It isn’t fuss; it’s love. But, every winter, you leave me. When will I learn?

Lemongrass is easy; you simply shove two unpromising supermarket stalks into a jar of water and wait for roots. It’s magical: the 21st-century sophisticate’s equivalent of cress on kitchen towel. However, all that you produce is a couple of leafy stems that, once you have planted them out, will be less useful than the original stalk; and, much more worrying, they won’t survive the winter. Don’t even try.

Which leaves us with lemon verbena, a reputedly tricky plant. I have been lucky with mine, perhaps because I fleece it thoroughly in winter and for the rest of the year treat it meanly, never transplanting it to a larger pot. The scent is fabulous: a resinous sherbety zest, exactly as one might hope a lemon tree’s bark might taste. Its most obvious glory is as tea. Culinarily, try it whenever you might include lemon zest or thyme..

Earliest Plants Are Responsible For Modern Day Oxygen Levels

While oxygen first appeared in Earth's atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago, it took another two billion years to reach the levels we breath in today.

Now a researchers believe they have identified what helped lead to this dramatic increase in oxygen on our planet - moss.

Scientists at the University of Exeter suggest moss-like plants were among the first to colonise the land and triggered oxygen in the atmosphere to increase.

The first plants are thought to have colonised the land from the oceans around 470 million years ago.

These first terrestrial plants were non-vascular plants, known as bryophytes, which include moss.

They say that the emergence of these plants increased the intake of organic carbon into sedimentary rocks – the primary source of atmospheric oxygen.

The scientists calculated that Earth's early plant biosphere could have produced roughly 30 per cent of the modern carbon take up from the atmosphere on land by around 445 million years ago.

This drove up oxygen levels and established a new, stable oxygen cycle.

The researchers estimate that within 50 million years of this, oxygen levels had reached modern levels.

Profesor Tim Lenton, who led the study, said: 'It's exciting to think that without the evolution of the humble moss, none of us would be here today.'

The earliest plants on earth were bryophytes - plants such as moss - which are non-vascular, meaning they do not have vein-like systems to move water and minerals around the plant.

The researchers used computer simulations to estimate when oxygen levels reached that of modern day.

What Do Yellow Roses Represent?

What do yellow roses represent is a question asked by people interested in yellow roses and before purchasing these beautiful roses.

Yellow roses were found growing in the Middle East around the 18th century. Wild roses from Afghanistan and Southwest Asia bloomed in pale yellow and a deep sulfur color. They were immediately renounced and grew quickly in popularity. The yellow rose at that time had no fragrant and although extremely beautiful this was a drawback. Also about this time techniques were being introduced in the field of rose cross-breeding and hybridization. As these techniques evolved they were able to add a pleasant aroma to the yellow rose.

In the beginning the yellow rose was associated two ways. The first was a negative connotation as a symbol of jealously and dying love. The positive symbolism was associated more with the color. The color yellow is related to the sun. The sun is known as a source of light and warmth an integral to life on Earth. As time passed the yellow rose was connected more to the color yellow rather than to the negative symbolism. Now they are related to joy and friendship and get well soon.

Yellow roses have different flower shapes. The globular is a bloom possessing many petals forming a ball-like arrangement with a closed center. An open-cupped is a bloom possessing many petals forming a cup-like arrangement with an open center. The quartered has inner petals folded into 4 distinct sections rather than forming a cone.

Yellow roses are available in several varieties. There are seven groups of roses. The classic rose is a long, pointed bud which opens to reveal many velvety or satin-like petals.


The Alpine Sunset is a yellow English bred rose. The flowers are very large and the fragrance is outstanding. These are great for cutting.

The Elina another yellow rose is the healthiest of Hybrid Teas. The flowers are borne singly on strong stems. Pointed buds open to produce porcelain-like flowers. These stand open well to poor weather.

Freedom has yellow pedals that do not fade with age and they fall cleanly. The scent is pleasant and the leaves are abundant.

Goldstar won top honors at The Hague. It has a special appeal for flower arrangers as the blooms are borne on long straight stems. The pure yellow blooms appear freely and the color does not fade with age.

Grandpa Dickson is regarded as the best pale yellow Hybrid Tea. Rose books sing its praises. Superbly formed blooms with long petals. It addition, its good rain resistance, freedom of flowering and late-season blooming makes it an excellent bedding variety.

King's Ransom has straggly growth but has non-fading blooms that are high-centered and rain-resistant. They are beautifully shaped and excellent for cutting.

There are several other yellow roses available should you decide to grow your own.

A bouquet of yellow roses will absolutely bring a smile to the receiver of this exquisite rose.

What do yellow roses represent? They represent warmth and happiness and sunny cheerful feelings. Yellow roses can send the message of appreciation or platonic love. P These are perfect to be given to a great friend either as a bouquet or a plant for the garden.

Plantwatch: Acorn crop dips as climate changes

Oak leaves in Britain are still mostly green. The oak is one of the last trees to change colour in autumn, although many have already dropped their acorns. But the days of finding lots of big acorns may be drawing to a close since they are falling victim to climate change.

A study of acorns has revealed that the warmer the weather the smaller the crop of acorns. Tim Sparks, a professor at Coventry University, has examined more than 160,000 observations of oaks and found that the more the first dates of flowering vary in springtime the poorer the acorn crop. In warmer springs the oak trees flower in a less synchronised fashion over a longer period and this gives a smaller crop of acorns in autumn, a drop of about 20%.

In cooler springs the oak flowers within a shorter period and the blooming is more synchronised, allowing more successful cross-pollination.

These days acorns are ripening about 13 days earlier than they did 10 years ago, a phenomenon that matches a widespread earlier shift in fruit and nuts ripening on British trees.

Another sign of the changes is autumn tree-leaf colours tending to appear later in the year and leaves staying on the trees longer; oak leaves now seem to lose their leaves about a week later than was the case 30 years ago.

The observations of the oaks and other trees came from a yearly survey of spring and autumn called Nature’s Calendar, run by the Woodland Trust. Each year the public is asked to record signs of those seasons in the natural world. It has built up into an invaluable, and timed, record.