I ate my lunch among the standing seedheads of Piet Oudolf’s Landscape at Wisley, on a rare day of sunshine. Blackened stonecrop and beads of rudbeckia were stark against the grasses and wetly orange Silene, and the Veronica was biscuity in the winter sun.
Asters pinpricked with tawny seedheads, and ‘New Jersey Skies’ threw silver daisies up to the clouds. Asclepias incarnata topped silvery and translucent, and stands of loosestrife, Veronicastrum and Achillea filipendulina march down the hill. The blue stem was rose gold verging on flamingo and feather edged, and mounds of shrubby hare’s ear were stubbornly green among the brown.
There were fuzzy balls of monarda rounding the corners most satisfyingly, with Echinacea and Phlomis echoing, and Cotinus edges with smoke puffs cobwebbing in the sunshine. And like moleskin, the Pycnanthemum muticum flickers high above new grey-green foliage, something new for home perhaps there.
a year in the garden 