Tuesday 22 November 2011

Hypericum ‘Hidcote’


The chief beauty of this glorious plant is its cheery butter yellow blooms, which seem to be waving at you in the most jovial manner. The other notable feature of this blithe cove is its relentless flowering, which began this year in June and has continued until this same cold day in late-November! The particular bloom above is seen in action here in Mrs Winthrop’s Garden, but the plant can be seen and enjoyed in various corners of Hidcote. This is primarily due to the plant’s garden-worthiness, but also of course because the plant was discovered by that man Major Lawrence Johnston in 1929, when he was plant hunting around Mount Kilimanjaro!

The view out from Winthrop’s points due south, and beyond the delightful autumn colour of the Euonymus europaeus lies… the Wilderness!

Some other autumn interest to be had here, Euphorbia longifolia ‘Amjilassa’

Just beside the Stream in Lower Winthrop’s is this shrub, Staphylea colchica, with its wonderful lantern seed pods

Winthrop’s in warmer times! Mrs Winthrop was Lawrence’s mother, and the colour scheme here reflects her penchant for yellows and blues

5 comments:

Janet said...

How appropriate that you should focus on a "Hidcote".
I like the pods of the staphylea colchica it's not a shrub I know. I'll have to google it....f

Jordan Jackson said...

Thanks for posting about Hypericum 'Hidcote'. It's a favorite plant in my garden. I had wondered how it came to be so named. Is it not a hybrid?

Prue said...

I love the hypericum. Thanks for brightning up the day, Bertie :)

Wife, Mother, Gardener said...

Beautiful color on the Euphorbia. And the yellow of the Hypericum fits the season so well! Nice that it keeps going well in to fall.

Bertie Bainbridge said...

Jordan it is believed to have been collected by Johnston on his 1929 trip to Tanzania. His notes on the large-flowered Hypericum he brought back from there match what we now call H. 'Hidcote'.

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