Anemonella - Athyrium

Anemonella thalictroides 'Betty Blake' £6
I'm a bit suspicious of both double and green anemonellas. Too many are too miffy. Betty is both double and green, yet is one of the toughest, fastest bulking varieties we know (but still small and woodsy of course). The flowers are neat full rosettes in pale lime green.
Anemopsis californica £4
A really different plant for the bog garden. Striking white bracts surround a tight inflorescence of little white flowers, making a big false flower. Rosettes of thick smooth leaves. From the American South West, and thriving in very hot conditions - we saw it looking splendid in a Tucson garden - but seems hardy for us. Keep it wet!
Angelica gigas £4
Classic biennial monolithic umbellifer, with dark purple heads on dark, dark stems. Thanks to Matt Bishop for seed from the Garden House (again), where a good clump in evening light last summer (photo on our website) rekindled our enthusism for the species. Easy from saved seed.
Angelica sylvestris 'Vicar's Mead' £4.50
An umbellifer with dark brown-purple foliage and pink flowers in summer. Not for dry soil. Sometimes dies after flowering, so save seed.
Anthericum ramosum £4
Airy branched spikes of starry white flowers in early summer.
Aquilegia schockleyi £4
A Californian miniature, with long narrow nodding flowers of scarlet and yellow. 20cm. Very pretty, and seems not to outbreed in cultivation.
Aristea ecklonii £4
Branched stems of piercing blue flowers make this one of the best of these African irids. Evergreen, and really quite hardy. 60cm.
Artemisia lactiflora 'Jim Russell' £5
We think this more elegant than the well known Guizho group. The foliage isn't quite as dark, but the flowers are properly white, not a dirty off white, and the habit is rather more arching. Still a sound 1.5m clumper.
Arthropodium cirratum 'Matapouri Bay' £5
Big evergrey-green monocot. Tall branched panicles of nodding white flowers in summer. Definitely for the frost free conservatory.
Aruncus 'Johannifest' £4.50
Interesting German hybrid. Fuzzy spikes of white flowers age pinkish; leaves finely divided. 60cm.
Aruncus 'Perlhuhn' £4.50
A little taller than 'Johannifest', with an indefinably different garden presence, and red tints in the foliage. The name means guinea fowl. I can't imagine why.
Asarum caudatum £4.50
Sinister purple flowers among dark green leaves; usefully spreading habit. A toughie for shade.
Asarum splendens £4
Larger leaves, marked silver. Flowers large enough to be noticeable without grovelling, with cream as well as brown in them. Splendid indeed. Moist-but-well-drained, and protect from slugs.

Aster 
We persist in the folly of listing a few unfashionable favourites from our garden in autumn. If we still have to mention the m-word, let's just say that we've never seen mildew on any of these, although if you treated them horribly enough for long enough you might be able to prove a point...
Aster 'Fellowship' £4.50
A big shaggy double lilac-pink michaelmas daisy. Julian's Mum uses it as a very effective cut flower. 1.2m.
Aster 'Kylie' AGM £4.50
Loads of very small pale pink flowers on a bushy 1.2m plant. Lasts well when cut. A unique novae-angliae x ericoides hybrid which greatly impressed us as a brand-new cultivar in the erstwhile Wraxall National Collection, about 1990. The name: well, if you find singing soap stars a bit offputting, I'm told that it's also a sort of incontinence pad. So that's all right.
Aster 'Little Carlow' AGM £4.50
Heaps of medium sized really blue flowers in September, all over a bushy plant. Bred in Devizes. 'Creating large clumps of colour year in year out [it] is a first-class, 'no-fuss' hybrid' writes Paul Picton, who really should know. 1.2m.
Aster 'Ochtendgloren' AGM £4.50
Another floriferous hybrid, with slightly smaller pink flowers. Good bushy habit and strong constitution. 1.2m.
Aster 'Pixie Dark Eye' £4.50
Lots of medium sized rich purple, yellow eyed flowers on a compact (60cm for us) plant. Quite out of the ordinary.
Aster 'Sunhelene' £4.50
A new one, with semidouble soft blue flowers at the top of stout 1m stems. Somehow the buds are conspicuous and attractive. ''Marie Ballard' without the mildew', as Bob Brown perceptively puts it.

Astrantia
The Masterworts are classic perennials for heavy ground, thriving in sun or part shade. All have dense umbels of tiny flowers, surrounded by a conspicuous collar of bracts and looking for all the world like a large, single flower. All reach around 60cm. Divisions.
Astrantia 'Buckland' £4
Very attractive hybrid, with large pink and green flower heads - like all Masterworts, great on heavy ground.
Astrantia major involucrata 'Shaggy' £4.50
Plants in pots never look their best. Once really established in fertile soil with reasonable moisture all year, the green-white bracts are really long, making a spectacular large false flower. These are divisions from Sarah's Mum's excellent plant.
Astrantia major 'Starburst' £4
Small but rather numerous branching red heads.
Astrantia maxima £4
Good pink flowers, three-lobed leaves. 60cm.

Athyrium 'Branford Beauty' £5
Beautiful hybrid Lady Fern, vigorous and with a grey cast to the leaf. Deciduous.
Athyrium filix-femina var. angustum 'Lady in Red' £5
Another good, distinctive Lady Fern, light green fronds with a red rachis (the stalk/midrib bit...).
Athyrium filix-femina 'Minutissimum' £4
Adorable little Lady Fern, less than 20cm tall, but perfectly formed, and making a dense, spreading clump. Ignore Martin Rickard's disparaging comments - these are not dodgy Dutch imports which end up tall but divisions of the plant we've cherished throughout our gardening career, originally from Washfield. The epitome of mini-ferniness.
Athyrium filix-femina 'Victoriae' £7
One of the classic rarities, we offer divisions of established tissue-cultured plants, close to the ultra-slowly splitting original (which was found by someone named Cosh - just thought I'd share that with you). Avoding mutant fern technicalities, the frond is long, narrow and almost parallel sided, the divisions are narrow and bracken-like, branching into little fingers at the tips, as does the tip of the frond. Undoubtedly weird and unnatural, but holds a peculiar attraction. Very decent sized plants for this price!
Athyrium 'Ghost' £6
On the same lines as 'Branford Beauty', but the metallic grey is more pronounced - stunning.
Athyrium niponicum var. pictum AGM £4
Classic easy silvery-grey leafed fern, with a mauve tint around the veins. Deciduous. 30cm.
Athyrium otophorum var. okanum £5.50
The dark red rachis and creamy yellow tint to the pinnae give a unique look. Deciduous, but retaining its colour long into autumn. For reasonably moist shade.