Special plants

A wet day now we're back home, though as I write at 5pm the sun came out - though briefly. I took the camera outside to try for a garden Blip now that we're not surrounded by the colourful harbours of East Fife!

One of the problems of being a plant lover is the fascination of growing plants, whether I need them or not. (I love this quote from horticulturalist David Hobson "I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.") I get round this by giving away surplus plants to local gardeners, but sometimes it isn't that easy. Last April I sowed a packet of seeds of Echium candicans, a shrubby echium from Madeira. Although not very hardy I'd grown this at Arduaine where it  survived for many years, achieving a couple of metres wide and maybe a metre high. The blue flowers, more stubby that the monocarpic echiums, are produced in summer. It enjoys a sunny, well-drained position and is a good seaside plant.

My seeds germinated and I now have four strong plants. I'm not sure where to grow it as my garden doesn't get a huge amount of sun, but out on the drive bed I think. So I have several spare plants to give away, but as it's a plant which needs a great deal of care I'm reluctant just to pass them out to people who will simply plant it in a flower bed as it will almost certainly succumb the first winter. Maybe I should look around the town to find a garden which looks ideal and knock on the door!