This exciting mix of salvia species will give you a variety of forms and colours for your garden. Size and colour of flower will vary from white to blues and reds. Includes salvias listed in this issue and: Salvia amplexicaulis, barrelieri, glutinosa, nemerosa ostfriedland. ... Learn More

This shrub or small tree can be found growing wild just about everywhere in Britain, the fragrant, flat topped, cream flower heads appear in May and June followed by the purple-black berries in September. The flowers are used to make the delicately-perfumed elder flower champagne, whilst the berries are used for wine. It used to be said that if you had an elder tree in the garden you had a medicine chest, or even a larder! The pith of the stems is easily pushed out and whistles were made from the hollow stems, the belief being that the sweetest sounding ones were made from trees that grew aw ... Learn More

Bright red elder berries open in dazzling clusters amongst the finely-divided golden feathery foliage, and even in full sun the foliage of this superb and striking Elder will look luminous and healthy, completely resisting sun-scorch. These exceptional plants are long-lived, even making superb hedging plants up to 2 m tall! Few fertile seeds set. ... Learn More

White, fragrant spring flowers give way to dazzling, pendulous clumps of pillar-box red berries, which shine with great intensity. A great improvement on our own black-fruited elder and now you can make red elderberry wine! Originally collected on our Russian trip to Sakhalin (RBS0265). ... Learn More

Endemic to China this rare plant is on the 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This unlikely but gorgeous relative of asarum, or wild ginger, grows in dense forests, valleys, and stream banks, at 600-1000 meters where it bears heart-shaped, woolly, felted leaves and bright yellow flowers in April-May, and is a must for the woodland garden where it will spread if happy. It was named after Augustine Henry, an Irish physician, who collected intensively in China for the Royal Botanic Garden Kew. Very few seeds collected. ... Learn More

A robust, easily-grown silver 'encrusted' saxifrage making handsome clumps of lime-encrusted rosettes which are attractive throughout the year. The long branched arching flower stems appear in early summer, bearing fragrant, red-spotted, white flowers. It is hardy and tough and very beautiful. 30 seeds or more approx per packet, seed is very small, take care when opening. ... Learn More

In early summer, from a dense, solid cushion consisting of compact evergreen rosettes of spoon-shaped, mid-green leaves with lime-encrusted margins, arise dense hairy sprays of rounded, sometimes red or yellow-spotted, white flowers in early summer. It performs well in a moderately fertile, very well drained scree or rockery. ... Learn More

Dense mats of medium sized, unusually narrow, lime-encrusted, silvery rosettes erupt with red-stemmed Inflorescences, 12-24cm high carrying branched panicles of small starry flowers with long yellowish-white petals. These superb alpines grow on the Eastern Alps, including the Dolomites, and also in northern Yugoslavia on limestone rocks. ... Learn More

A tight rosette of silver encrusted leaves give way to a bright red flowering stem, which arises like a dragon's head from the blood-red-centred rosette, bearing sprays of pink flowers. The colony of rosettes will slowly expand to make a mounded stunning effect. These plants do best in a well drained soil in a trough or rock garden. ... Learn More

This diminutive mat-forming, evergreen perennial bears small, dense rosettes of tiny, oval to oblong, lime-encrusted, silvery grey-green leaves and slender, red-flushed stems, bearing narrow, flat sprays of cup-shaped, white flowers in late spring and early summer. Perhaps one of the best 'encrusted saxifrages' the silver rosettes are very tiny and densely packed. A really choice alpine making a wonderful trough plant or for chinking into rock crevices. ... Learn More

These lovely white star-shaped flowers with red calyces are borne on thin, wiry stems from June to August, and are marked with orange at the centre of each petal. These dwarf plants, which make tiny rosettes of fleshy, notched leaves, live in damp environments, such as on wet cliffs, beside streams or springs, or on wet rock ledges. ... Learn More

These gorgeous first year flowering perennials come in a dazzling mixture of all colours from mauve to deepest red all with contrasting white stamens and ruffled outer petals. It's not just butterflies that love these lovely, sweetly fragrant, easy-to-grow, ever-popular and very rewarding; humans are happy to find room for them too! Moderately fast growing, they give a profusion of double pincushion flowers, two inches or so across, on tall, strong stems. Blooming from summer into early autumn, they will give a touch of class to your border and supply you with some excellent cut flowers. ... Learn More

A gorgeous, slowly-spreading plant, producing 'pincushion' flowers on many branching stems over a very, very long flowering season, often into winter!. This rarely seen colour makes a bright splash even in the darkest corner. The dense, double, scabious like flowers are a brilliantly strong crimson-cherry-red, a rare colour in border flowers, and in time it makes a large, neat, rounded bushy plant producing countless flowers which are also excellent for cutting. Although its alternative name is Knautia, (pronounced 'naughtier'), this easy to grow, strikingly beautiful plant, thankfully doesn ... Learn More

This new stunning variety has unusually large flowers of deepest, most luscious, lipstick-red, which open on strong stems from early summer onwards for a very long period. This superb, vigorous, rapidly multiplying new plant will thrive in all conditions from a hot dry spot to shallow water, and in a sheltered area these plants can continue flowering right through the winter. ... Learn More

A spectacular, small to medium sized, deciduous or evergreen tree that can reach up to 20 m tall. With a spreading crown, compound leaves and a profusion of deep red flowers in spring, it is well-suited to shade as an ornamental tree in warmer regions. The new leaves are bright red and add to the tree's attractiveness. It is named for the copious nectar that drips from its flowers, which attracts various species of birds and insects. ... Learn More