Some Hardy Perennials

Both garden and I wilted on the recent oven-like 42°C day.

Well, most of the garden. Some plants are extraordinarily resilient, taking heat & dry soil with aplomb. (Here we have tank water only...so the garden gets almost zero watering...in a Mediterranean climate.)

Blue salvia (probably Salvia chamaedryoides `Marine Blue', pictured above), is holding up well, and should flower right through the warm months (up until late autumn), like the rest of its tribe. Both the salvia and the nearby Phygelius are looking at me, saying, superciliously, `What Heat?' - and both attract myriads of birds seeking nectar. (Phygelius might be a bit messy to have near the house, but the constant avian activity that we can see through our windows makes it worth the pain.)

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis, above) is surprisingly happy in pots - these are kept watered - and I'm looking at them afresh. I'm preparing a talk on poppies and, to my surprise, bloodroot is in the handsome poppy family. Every single species in Papaveraceae seems to have the prettiest of flowers (and sometimes, as here, wonderful leaves)! Like all the other wealth of poppies - which grow from the cold Arctic to the heat of South Africa - bloodroot produces a fluid - latex - which contains alkaloids (interesting ones in the opium poppy).

Cut a stem and out comes the fluid, orange in this case but fancifully named as blood-like.

Speaking of poppies, my Papaver `Lauren's Grape' (pictured in my last post) is setting seed and I've carefully cut off three seeds heads, as they've ripened, with the ring of pores open to release - it seems - thousands of tiny seeds from the pepper pot-like seed heads. Don't pick them green! - the seeds will not be ready. I've only had the one variety growing so the next generation may have, again, that wonderful purple.

 

 True lilies (Lilium, top), too, are flowering their heads off.

I love it when the garden gives you a truly wonderful  surprise.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria. (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)