Painted Persicarias

They're tough, hardy perennials that erupt early from winter dormancy.  When they flower later in the year the little white flowers are nothing to write home about.  The frequently need cutting back, both at 'Chelsea chop' time and again later in the year.  They can even be invasive in good conditions.  So why are they a mainstay of many an exotic garden?

Because of the foliage.

Persicaria microcephala 'Purple Fantasy'

One of the features of sub-tropical and tropical gardens is the use of bright foliage as underplanting to the specimen plants.  In cold, wet and windy UK we can't grow the range of colourful foliage plants available in warmer climates but we can grow plants like 'Purple Fantasy', 'Red Dragon' and 'Silver Dragon' to add that tropical looking sparkle to even mundane plantings.

Persicaria microcephala 'Silver Dragon'

Persicaria microcephala 'Red Dragon'

All three carry the characteristic V shaped leaf bar of P.microcephala but the expression is different enough to make them equally desirable.

P. virginiana also offers a couple of painted leaf forms.  'Painter's Palette' is similar to 'Compton's Form' in the V bar is more diffuse and spread as blotches across the individual leaves.  These emerge later in spring than the P. microcephala varieties but soom cover theground with pretty leaves.

Persicaria virgata 'Compton's Form'

So, if you're looking for a tough, hardy, ground covering filler plant under more exotic specimens you can't go too wrong with any or all of these painted Persicarias.

Musa basjoo flowering

I speculated at the beginning of March that my 'hardy' banana, Musa basjoo, might flower this year.  I was right.  Almost immediately after posting that I noticed a fat bud begin to emerge from the top of one of the pseudostems.  A little to my surprise it wasn't the tallest or the thickest of them.  Upright at first...

...the bud stem elongates and the fat bud droops below the horizontal.  Unfortunately for the display the wind has played havoc with the unfurling leaves of the banana and the opening bud now sits among the wreckage.

The bud then opens to reveal the flowers, clustered at the base of the bracts.  .

Each pair of bracts will open in turn to reveal another set of flowers as the season progresses.  I may even get small bananas forming though these are not edible.

I've grown Musa basjoo for many years but this is the first flowering.  With luck and more mild winters it won't be the last.

Erythroniums

I love these spring bulbs with their delicate reflexed flowers on relatively tall stems above, depending on the species and cultivar, mottled leaves giving the North American species the common name of trout lilies.  These are woodland plants in the wild, but open woodland, with deep moist soils and abundant light in the spring, but offering protection from harsh, baking conditions in the summer and autumn.

They thrive in conditions like this...

Erythronium revolutum 'Johnsonii Group'

...where they can create dense carpets in time.

They're not just pink.  Consider the yellow E. tuolumnense, usually available as the cultivar 'Kondo'...

...or the white flowered Erythronium californicum 'White Beauty'...

...or the pinkish yellow shades of the E. californicum x tuolumnense hybrid 'Joanna'/

They're even a good nectar source, as witnessed by this Brimstone butterfly feeding an early spring.

Versatile plants, they deserve a place in any garden that can offer the open woodland like conditions they need to thrive.