Get to know the plants of The Joy Club Garden at The RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival!
First up, Alchemilla mollis Auslese. A cottage garden favourite with sensual foliage and zingy flower highlights. The flowers are excellent for cutting and can be dried for use later in the season.
Next, we have Achillea ‘Cloth of Gold’. A border plant with flat, plate-like, mustard yellow flower heads carried above finely-cut, ferny foliage. This free-flowering perennial is undemanding and easy to grow.
Achillea ptarmica (aka ‘Peter Cottontail’ or ‘Sneezewort’) is another perennial you can find in The Joy Club Garden. It forms a low mound of glossy, dark green, narrowly lance-shaped leaves topped with white, button-like flower heads in summer and autumn.
A favourite for pollinators, Agastache ‘Beelicious Purple’ is a compact, upright, bushy, borderline hardy, deciduous perennial with aromatic, lance-shaped, deeply veined, dark green leaves. Simply stunning!
You can also find Alchemilla epipsila. This unusual form of ‘Lady’s Mantle’ has leaves that are softly hairy, rounded and have up to eleven shallow lobes. From June to July, clusters of small yellowy-green flowers appear to bob above neat mounds of concertina-style leaves.
Introducing Allium sphaerocephalon (aka Ornamental onion). A striking allium with dense green drumstick-style flower heads, which mature to maroon-red.
Next up, we have Calamintha nepeta Snowflake. ‘Snowflake’ (a variety of catmint) is a rounded herbaceous perennial with aromatic, grey-green foliage and spires of tubular, white flowers in summer. Gorgeous.
Time for a splash of colour! Coreopsis verticillata ‘Zagreb’ bears large, star-shaped, bright yellow flowers on upright, wiry stems, in contrast with dark green filigree leaves. It’s a magnet for bees and other pollinators and makes a good cut flower.
The Joy Club Garden features Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldtau’ at its four corners. ‘Goldtau’ (or tufted hair grass) has dark green leaves that age to golden brown. The flower plumes are silvery brown and green, turning warm gold as they mature, giving a shimmering effect.
Digitalis canariensis (or Canary Island foxglove) is an evergreen, sparingly-branched shrub with serrated, oval, dark green leaves. The flowers are foxglove-like with a flattened appearance and are reddish-orange or apricot in colour.
Visitors to The Joy Club Garden have been big fans of Euonymus japonicus ‘Green Spire’. It’s a small, bushy upright evergreen shrub with dense dark glossy green foliage. It makes a strong but slow-growing dwarf hedge and is an excellent substitute for box where blight may be a problem.
Another visitor favourite, Gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’ creates a mat of soft, grey-green foliage that contrasts beautifully with its delicate star-shaped, white-pink flowers. It has a delicate but wild look that suits natural style plantings.
We just love our Geranium ‘Azure Rush’. Large, blue saucer-like flowers with white centres are produced across a slender carpet of pretty, deeply divided mid-green leaves. A real stunner.
Hemerocallis ‘Gentle Shepherd’ brings masses of ivory-white flowers that last just one day and appear continuously in midsummer on slender, upright stems. In mild areas, it is semi-evergreen and forms large clumps of strap-like leaves, valuable for suppressing weeds.
We’ve had lots of enquiries about this one. Lonicera nitida ‘Copper Glow’ is a striking shrubby Honeysuckle with glossy, copper-coloured vibrant young foliage.
Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire’ (aka Russian sage) is an erect small deciduous with white stems bearing deeply-divided, aromatic greyish leaves. It has small violet-blue flowers in large plumy clusters in late summer and autumn.
The Joy Club Garden features two Pinus sylvestris (or Scots pines) – a tree in the pine family Pinaceae native to Eurasia. In our garden, it represents wisdom and longevity.
Presenting Veronica longifolia ‘First Lady’. Branching stems with majestic white spikes make up a ‘First Lady’ that stands elegantly amid clean deep-green foliage. Long-blooming flowers draw butterfly and hummingbird admirers!
And last, but not least, The Joy Club Garden features Veronica longifolia ‘Blauriesin’. Also known as garden speedwell, this is a bushy, clump-forming perennial with upright stems and long, lance-shaped, toothed green leaves.
If you’d like to see the combined magic of all these wonderful plants, visit the garden in person at Hampton Court Palace until Saturday 9th July. Find us at HC420. We’d be delighted to see you there!