Desirable Plants
Quality Plants by Mail Order
from Sarah & Julian Sutton of
Pentamar, Crosspark, Totnes, Devon.
Baptisia - Bulbinella
Plant names highlighted in green have images attached, click to view.
Baptisia 'Purple Smoke' £4.50
Differs from others in having smoky violet-purple flowers and dark-flushed stems. Slow to propagate. Subtle and distinct.
Beesia calthifolia DJHC 98447 £4.50
Spreading clumps of cordate leaves, bronzy green as they emerge and becoming marbled as they age. Lots of little white flowers on 30cm+ stems in summer, rather like the related Actaea, but it’s the foliage that makes it so special. Effective either in the woodland garden or a pot.
Bellevalia dubia £4
Diminutive muscari-relative. Light blue buds open milk chocolate with a cream edge. Spring.
Bellevalia tabriziana £3.75
One of the last spring bulbs to flower. The flowers flare like a bluebell, white with light blue tips, in an open bluebell-like inflorescence. 10-15cm tall, for sun. Just great.
Bergenia ‘Bartók’ £4
A good old Eric Smith plant, particularly good for its shiny but not flat, upwardly angled leaves, reddening well in cold weather. Red-pink flowers.
Bergenia ciliata ‘Wilton’ £6
Ordinary ciliata has hairy dinner plates for leaves and wonderful pale pink flowers in February. This is hairier, much hairier, soft and strokable, not bristly. Customers ask ‘what’s the difference?’ until they feel it.
Bergenia emeiensis £4.50
A little sweetie from Western China, white flowers from pink calyces and small leaves. Compact and under 30cm in height.
Bergenia ‘Overture’ £4.50
Intense magenta flowers on red stems. The upwardly inclined leaves are excellent for winter colour - as always, exposure to cold and light intensifies this.
Bergenia pacumbis CC3616 £4
Related to ciliata; big shiny leaves edged with hairs and pink flowers very early in spring while the leaves are still small.
Bergenia ‘Pink Ice’ £5
Robin White’s clear pink flowered emeiensis hybrid brings the poise of that species to a somewhat stouter plant. Beautiful yet hardly ever seen – I don’t know why.
Bergenia purpurascens ‘Irish Crimson’ AGM £5
Fantastically good upstanding foliage, as red as anything in winter. Nice deep red-purple nodding flowers. Not a fast runner. One of the stars of the Wisley trial.
Bidens aurea ‘Hannays’ Lemon Drop’ £5
We’ve grown this tall, spreading, remarkably hardy South African daisy for more than 20 years, yet have never listed it. Here goes... 1m or taller by the end of the season, the flowers are more like a small (but not very small) single dahlia than a daisy, in a smart colour scheme, warm yellow at the base of the petal, getting a bit paler as you go out, with distinct white tips. It’s very long flowering, August to October. Seen in a nursery pot, it looks alarming, running round and round, yet it makes relatively open clumps in the ground, and seems not to be wildly invasive (the excellent Val Bourne, in a piece in the Telegraph a few years back, came to the same conclusion).
Blechnum chilense£5.50
A very handsome large fern, evergreen with tough, glossy pinnate fronds. Bold and somewhat spreading, 1m or so in height. Hardy in southern and western areas, pretty good even in the Midlands, it seems, especially if mulched. Acidic or neutral soil.
Blechnum wattsii £6
A smaller (60cm) Australian counterpart of the previous fern, more definitely for shade, and much less grown so its hardiness is not well known - OK here.
Bletilla striata£4
An easy, large flowered, clump forming hardy orchid - what could be nicer? Bright green, pleated leaves and vivid pink flowers, dying back to tubers in winter. Recommended for humus rich partial shade, but can thrive in full sun or heavy soil.
Bletilla striata var. japonica f. gebina £4
And again, this time white flowered with a pink flush inside.
Bomarea edulis £4.50
A herbaceous, climbing Alstroemeria relative which can reach 2m or more in a season, with tubular dull red flowers, yellow and green inside, in late summer. Dies down to cucumberish tasting edible tubers, which need protection from intense frost.
Bulbinella nutans £4
A winter growing South African bulb, with dense spikes of flowers, cheerful bright yellow in this form, reaching 40cm in early spring, over long traily shiny green leaves. It’s remarkably frost tolerant if grown on the dry side, and enjoys a dry summer bake.
For all those interested in South African plants we've also put all our listings of South African
bulbs and plants onto one website we've called South African Bulbs at Desirable Plants.
The order forms below can be filled in electronically for sending by e-mail, or printed, for sending by post. See Ordering and Carriage. The *.doc file is included for those who have Microsoft Word or Open Office; for those who don't a *.rtf file has been included and this will open Wordpad, which is usually included with all Microsoft operating systems. If you have any problems please E-Mail us.
Order Form (Microsoft Word Format *.doc)
Order Form (Rich Text Format *.rtf)
Order Form (PDF Format *.pdf)
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