In the Mediterranean Garden you will see Verbascum lydium subsp. heterandrum (above). These giants are over 2m tall, and their yellow flowers open early in the morning, closing before the heat of the day. In their native Greece the light intensity is very powerful, so the plants are protected by a mealy down that reflects the light. This plant is host to Mullein Moth caterpillars who maintain a careful balance between their respective populations so the garden is not over-run by either.

Located in the Palm Garden there is a huge specimen of Brugmansia sanguinea. This member of the potato family is sometimes seen in conservatories as a low growing shrub with enormous trumpet flowers. At VBG it has been growing out of doors since 2007 and is often included on the list of New Year’s Day flowers each year. It can attain the size of a tree, as below in St Marys, Scilly Isles.

In the Mixed Border flowering now is Impatiens tinctoria from Tropical Africa. This part of the garden is actually quite cold, it’s our closest point to sea level and the plant doesn’t have any protective canopy above when we hit winter. Nonetheless it will flower through Christmas until the temperatures hover around 0°C. The winter of 2023/24 was the coldest at VBG since 2012, this part of the garden had ice one morning and the plant was burned back to the floor, but it has grown back and been flowering for several weeks now.

Callistemon rigidus (also known as Melaleuca rigidus) comes from New South Wales and Queensland. It has been in cultivation for over 200 years as a heat loving shrub, often grown against walls. The attractive bottle-brush inflorescence is made up of individual spirally arranged flowers encircling the stem. The flowers have very much reduced sepals and petals, most of the flower body is given over to the large coloured filaments holding the anthers.

Lophomyrtus x ralphii “Krinkly” from the same family as the Myrtaceae, its flower far more clearly resembling a myrtle flower with its petals backing the white filaments. Lophomyrtus is far less common in cultivation. This cultivar is a selection from deliberately crossed parents and is grown for its strange, blistered, shiny leaves with an odd almost fleshy colour.

Metrosideros robusta, also in the Myrtle family and also from New Zealand. This is a huge tree in the wild and is completely clothed in flower for its flowering season in the summer. It is one of the most difficult plants to grow at VBG, it has the “double whammy” of being half hardy, very susceptible to frost, and not liking alkaline soil one tiny bit. 

Looks fabulous at this time of year