Albuca - Anemone

Ageratina altissima 'Chocolate' AGM £3 / £4
Copious brown-purple foliage makes a lovely effect in the sunny border. Harmless white flowers. Hardy, winter dormant. Previously known as Eupatorium rugosum.

Albuca fragrans £3 / £4.50
A winter growing South African bulb with tall (1m+) stems of nodding flowers, yellow striped with green. Impressive but scacely fragrant. Borderline hardy here.

Albuca humilis  £3.25
A tiny counterpart, large flowers white, striped green, 15cm.  Summer growing. The next may well be a very tall form of the species.

Albuca shawii £3 /£3.50
Another summer grower, to 30cm. Many yellow flowers with a fruity fragrance in summer. Hardy-ish and freely increasing.

Alcea x Althaea 'Parkallee' £3 / £4.50
Creamy yellow semidouble perennial hollyhock which doesn't get rust. To 1.5m. A very satisfactory garden plant.

Alchemilla ellenbeckii £3 /£3.50
A far creeping, densely mat forming plant with tiny grey green leaves and red stems. The flowers are insignificant. From the mountains of East Africa, it is not totally hardy everywhere, but has survived outside here for nearly 15 years,  retreating in colder winters and zooming back out in the summer. We use it over the corner of a sunny but not dry wall as a positively attractive ground cover.

Allium beesianum £3.25
The classic sky blue allium. Heads of drooping flowers on 20cm stems at the end of the summer. Rock garden or similar. Long flowering, lovely and usually replaced by something else in the nursery trade.

Allium callimischon ssp. haemostictum £3.25
A dinky summer dormant Cretan with an odd phenology: the flower stem grows with the leaves in spring, seems to wither with them in the height of summer (don't tidy them away), only for the flowers to open  in autumn on the leafless plants. The flowers are white, spotted and veined dark red, and are one of the joys of autumn. Pot or sunny raised bed, etc.

Allium paradoxum var. normale £3
The Snowdrop Allium. Nodding, pure white fls look really big on 10cm stems in spring. Broad, bright green leaves. Forms tight clumps, ideal in a sink. Stunning and safe, unlike the dreaded var. paradoxum on both counts.

Allium schoenoprasum 'Silver Chimes' £2.50
Ordinary chives - but with flowers a very attractive silvery white.

Alstroemeria tall, long-flowering red £3.75/ £4.50
An anonymous hybrid from Sarah's mother's garden, where it is astonishingly good. Loads of deep red, yellow marked flowers on 1.5m stems from late spring through to late autumn with her. She does give it a little low-down support, but considers that worthwhile given the enormous impact in the garden and value as a cut flower.

x Amarcrinum memoria-corsii 'Howardii' (Amaryllis belladonna x Crinum moorei) £5. Big winter growing bulb, with the general look of a Crinum but the growth cycle of an Amaryllis.  Fragrant, large pink flowers in autumn. Needs a bit of winter protection, in a big pot.

Amorphophallus konjac £3 / £3.50
Reputedly the hardiest of these big, arisaema-like aroids. Spathe purple-brown. Leaves lobed in a wonderfully complex way, and recall a big shuttlecock. Dark petiole, blotched cream.

Anemone

Those with the wood anemone habit are best divided in autumn, so we will send out pieces of recently potted rhizome, best left potted until in growth in spring.

Anemone apennina var. albiflora £2.75/£3.50
A spring flowering, readily clump-forming rhizomatous species, recalling nemorosa with loads of extra sepals (in Anemone, read 'petals' for 'sepals' if you're not botanically inclined). This form has pure white, blue-backed sepals.

Anemone appenina double flowered £4
Rarely seen, and weaker growing than the previous, this form has fully double flowers of an indescribable, almost iridescent pale lilac. Few.

Anemone flaccida £2.75/£3.50
A rhizomatous plant for woodland conditions. The leaves are rather thick, and elegantly marbled. The flowers are creamy white, of a good size, in early spring. 15cm.

Anemone 'Hatakeyama Single' £3 / £3.50
Very pretty, very dwarf, Japanese Anemone. Pink, to 40cm.

Anemone hupehensis alba £3 / £3.75
A rare 'Japanese' anemone from China. White flowers with a central boss of golden stamens, on 1.2m stems in late summer. When it rains, the flowers nod, revealing that the reverse has alternating zones of white and deep wine red. Very beautiful and in great demand. From a CLD collection.

Anemone hupehensis 'Bodnant Burgundy' £3 / £4
Middling height Japanese anemone with plenty of deep reddish pink sepals. To 1m.

Anemone x lipsiensis £2.75
Essentially a smaller, more delicate version of A. nemorosa, with lovely pale yellow flowers. Well worth finding it the humusy soil it needs.

Anemone nemorosa varieties £2.75
The wood anemones need little introduction as tough, gently spreading woodlanders, never failing to charm, whether in leaf or flower.
'Bill Baker's Pink' is a good pink, starting pale and darkening. 'Buckland' and 'Royal Blue' are decent blues. 'Blue Eyes' is a shaggy semi-double, white with a blue flush around the centre of the fully double flower. 'Flore Pleno' is a pure white double - increasingly I doubt whether the differences between this and 'Vestal', which people so freely quote, are valid. The muscular 'Lady Doneraile' has really big white flowers standing head and shoulders above the leaves (it may be the same as Leeds' Variety and Wilks' Giant; nobody knows wood anemones well enough).

Anemone obtusiloba 'Sulphurea' £3
Small softly hairy rosettes sending up lemon yellow flowers with a luminous hint of highlighter pen, in spring but often continuing well into summer. 10cm. Humusy soil, light shade.

Anemone ranunculoides ssp. wockeana £3
Tiny, floriferous, buttercup yellow wood anemone relative: 5cm.

Anemone rivularis  £2.75 / £3.50
A fine plant for moist humusy soil in full sun or light shade, with its many white flowers, with sepals backed in metallic blue. 75cm.

Anemone sylvestris 'Flore Pleno' £3 / £3.50
Exquisite, neat, full double form of the next species.

Anemone sylvestris 'Macrantha' £2.75 / £3.50
Fine, large flowered form of the Snowdrop Anemone. Scented white, somewhat nodding white flowers in spring and beyond. More or less spreading habit; for sun or shade but not too dry.

Anemone sp. nov.? £3 / £3.50
Chinese, and rhizomatous. White, purple backed flowers, young leaves purple. Height 40cm. Moist, sun.