Hillview Hardy Plants
|
|
|
|
|
 The
Garden RHS Magazine - Interview with Roy Lancaster RELIABLY HARDY A Shropshire nursery offers a wide selection of perennials that thrive on a windswept hillside. Roy Lancaster takes his pick from Hillview Hardy Plants. photography: Tim Sandall |
|||||||
 On
a clear day, you can see the Clee Hills,’ Ingrid Millington tells
me. We are standing at the entrance to Hillview Hardy Plants, near Worfield
in Shropshire, but as the view is hazy, we turn our attention instead to
the plants that are displayed in a small garden wrapped around her cottage
home.Ingrid started the nursery in 1986 while husband John was employed by Birmingham Parks Department, providing them with a steady income. They met as students at Writtle College in Essex, in the early 1970s, and their passion for plants led them to search for a suitable site on which to start their own business. What they eventually settled for was a former tomato nursery on an acre of dry, neutral, sandy soil, exposed and almost devoid of shelter. First they set about providing a windbreak along their southern boundary then turned their attention to the assortment of old inherited glasshouses and dilapidated plastic tunnels, gradually replacing them with modern tunnels plus a decent energy-efficient glasshouse with thermal screening and heated propagation beds, all computer controlled as is the nursery’s irrigation system. As for the plants, the Millingtons began with their first love, alpines, but as these declined in popularity, they gradually changed over to perennials – now their principal business. Passion for wild flowers  It
was a hardy perennial that first attracted my attention when I began my tour
of the nursery. Geum ‘Bell Bank’ is not only of native origin but
was also discovered by my old friend Geoffrey Smith whose passion for wild flowers
is well known. Geoffrey told me how in the early 1980s he raised a few seedlings of native Geum rivale (water avens) at his home at Kettlesing in Yorkshire. These were planted in a moist bed in his garden in which grew seedlings of G. coccineum, leftovers from a Harlow Carr trial. He thinks the two species crossed to produce the plant he eventually christened G. ‘Bell Bank’ after the hill above his home. Easy and well behaved given a cool, moist soil, G. ‘Bell Bank’ produces a clump of crisp green, toothy leaves, above which in summer rise slender, branching, dusky stems to 75cm (30in) tall, each branch terminating in a nodding bud that gradually lifts as it opens to display a beautifully formed circular head comprising a double row of peach pink petals. It is a perfectly delightful perennial, as yet little grown, and worthy of a place in all but the driest garden. This was the perfect start, and then, as Ingrid led me through the various raised beds and cold frames where perennials of many kinds are displayed for sale, I spotted another perennial I had not seen before. Polemonium ‘Ingrid’ was raised on the nursery as a seedling of P. carneum ‘Apricot Delight’ a hybrid with apricot-pink fading to primrose-coloured flowers. Polemonium ‘Ingrid’, named for mine host, has similarly coloured flowers carried in freely branched sprays 45–60cm (18–24in) tall in May and June. Where it differs is in its variegated foliage – a creamy margin to the grey-green leaflets complements the flowers perfectly, in a semi-shaded spot. I have long admired the genus Acanthus and grow several species in my Hampshire garden. My ears pricked up therefore when Ingrid mentioned the collection of these sun-loving, summer-blooming perennials they were growing and gradually making available. One of my favourites is A. dioscoridis with 30-cm (12-in) spikes of pink flowers protruding from pale jade-green, spine-toothed bracts. I am equally fond of the all-green, grey-downy A. hirsutus whose creeping habit creates in time carpets of foliage providing a useful ground cover.  Vastly different in its lush habit, A. hungaricus has beefy clumps of boldly lobed, deep green foliage and stems to 70cm (28in) sporting dense spikes of white and pink flowers in a crop of purple-tinted prickly bracts. Like the larger A. mollis, this handsome species is shade tolerant and can be used as ground cover beneath deciduous shrubs and trees. Dramatic composite The bold orange-yellow Van Gogh daisy heads of Inula orientalis next caught my eye, reminding me of the time I first saw this dramatic composite growing in the lush alpine meadows above T’elavi in the eastern Caucasus mountains. That was all of 23 years ago, but the memory of that happy day always returns whenever I see this perennial. Ë Hillview Hardy Plants offers this plant under the name Inula ‘Oriental Star’ though I fail to see how it differs from I. orientalis, lest it be in its more compact, shorter-stemmed growth. In my experience, I. orientalis is not the most long-lived of the genus, but it is rewarding when grown well. Perceived charm Given the size of the genus Lathyrus – some 160 species according to Mabberley (The Plant Book) – surprisingly few are cultivated in gardens. Some, such as L. latifolius, L. vernus and sweet peas, of course, are ornamental, while most of the others in my opinion are decidedly ordinary. In between are a number of botanical interest that slip into the ornamental sphere based more on their perceived elegance or charm rather than floral panache, and one of these is L. niger. Native to Europe, southern to northwest Africa, and east to north Iran, this slender-stemmed perennial up to 90cm (3ft) is more like a vetch in its appearance with its pinnate leaves and long-stalked axillary racemes of small pea-like flowers in summer that fade from purple to blue to be replaced by black seed pods. The name niger refers to the fact that all parts of the plant, in particularly the leaves, turn black on dying, which sounds to me a good enough reason not to grow it! I should add, however, that a National Plant Collection holder of Lathyrus, Sylvia Norton, in her nccpg publication Lathyrus regards L. niger as a ‘handsome plant’. This opinion is shared by Ingrid and John and demonstrated by a nice batch of saleable plants flowering in a frame.  Long-time favourite I have admired Erodium pelargoniiflorum over many years. Not until last year, though, having seen it flourishing in the dry exposed beds at Hillview, did I push the boat out and buy not one but three plants, setting them out in the Bagshot sand of my front garden. Here they quietly settled in, producing a profusion of purple-veined and stained white flowers from spring to early autumn. Native to South Africa, E. pelargoniiflorum is a plant well worth growing in British gardens providing you can give it full sun and a well-drained soil. Once established in suitable conditions, it is capable of seeding around, providing plenty of spare plants for potting-on, which should be carried out when seedlings are still small. Hillview Hardy Plants is the sole supplier of Achillea chamaemelifolia listed in the RHS Plant Finder. This is surprising given that it has handsome foliage to match its attractive heads of white flowers. Knowing my penchant for climbers, Ingrid led me through one of the plastic tunnels to see Bomarea hirtella. It was big – really big – a vigorous climber with fleshy, bloomy-dusky shoots, bold green foliage and pendent sprays of red and yellowish-green, tubular bell-shaped flowers that continue through summer. The stock plant was only two years old from seed, yet it had already developed a cluster of tubers at its base which remain when the stems die down. The small selection of plants I have chosen to describe gives little or no clue as to the wide range of perennials grown at Hillview. Anemone, Achillea, Phlox and Primula are all well represented as is Crocosmia. Ingrid and John Millington have now increased their attendance at plant and flower shows around the country, which has won for them a loyal clientele whose enthusiasm encourages the couple to search ever wider for new and little-known plants. A windy hillside might not be a gardener’s ideal, but as a test ground for growing their fine range of hardy, drought-tolerant and reliable perennials, the Millingtons could hardly have chosen better.  Roy
Lancaster vmh, plantsman, lecturer, writer and broadcaster, is a member of RHS Floral Committee B • On 7 August 2003, Hillview Hardy Plants held an RHS Crocosmia Day with talks on propagation and crocosmia breeding. |
||||||||
