Flaming or soggy wet June- take your choice...

It has been a mad rush here at the Exotic Garden (www.exoticgarden.com) over the last few weeks getting the garden ready for its official opening on June 21st, though due to popular demand I have opened the garden to a few Private groups already. Last week, we had a group of twenty seven keen gardeners from Switzerland and another group from Birmingham. Today, Norwich Cathedral School is holding an art class in the garden – ducking in and out of the showers. The busy season has now begun with a vengeance!

The thing about this style of gardening is that although it has a back bone of hardy exotics (Palms/bamboos/Hostas etc) to carry it all the way through the winter, the more tender planting cannot be planted out until I am pretty sure the cold knights have finished, around late May to early June here in Norwich, Norfolk.



Much to most visitors’ surprise – I also consider the common house plant Tradescantia fluminensis hardy, surviving the vagaries of an East Anglian winter. In the garden it dies to the ground reappearing in Early April. Tradescantia x andersoniana is very hardy plant now in full bloom with glorious rich-purple flower. Though considered a fairly common plant, it never-the-less gives a good splash of intense colour at this time of year.



Most traditional gardens with herbaceous borders and roses usually reach a peek from May through to early July, and then sadly go over. Tropicals on the other hand, power up to a crescendo from late July, all the way through to October, when most traditional planting has well and truly finished. Although many of the plants are comparatively small when planted out such as Strobilanthes dyerianus (Persian Shield) with its silvery-metallic purplish-pink leaves and Solenostemon (Coleus those who aren’t aware of its name change). With a good dose of blood fish and bone, they soon grow into very bushy plants all joining together by early July.



Another tender perennial I grow in pots during the summer months is Thunbergia gregorii with its intense, day glow orange flowers. Unlike the annual Thunbergia alata, this beauty can be kept from year to year, overwintered at about 5C (40F)



A plant that self-seeded in the garden some years ago is the American Pokeweed, Phytolacca americana, with its deliciously pink flowers followed in late summer by almost black fruit.



For about five years I have been growing Lomatia ferruginea, a fabulous plant indigenous to Chile. It is a beautiful shrub or small tree with stiff, fern-like foliage, now in bloom for the first time in the garden and a beautiful sight to behold, with its almost waxy flowers about 1ins across, which look as though they are going to last for many weeks.





I hope you all enjoyed a good rainstorm in the last few days – we certainly needed it. Have a great gardening week ahead and enjoy the long summer evenings. Light until gone 10pm – fabulous!