What is your plant of the year?

Which plant was the star of your garden this year? Mine would have to be Salvia patens 'Oxford Blue', which has been sending up spikes of electric blue flowers all summer and is still going strong despite the cold, dank weather. I'll definitely want it in the garden next year. How about other forum members?

 

Bowles Mauve' perennial Wallflower. I planted it in March and it's still blooming, with more buds appearing every day. I know it can get woody, so I took cuttings a month or so back, rather successfully I might add

Can I have a second plant of the year? If so, it would be Clematis Bill Mackenzie. It was given to me as a seedling that had rooted in a friend's garden and two years on has covered a 6 foot fence panel in pretty, little, yellow flowers and wonderful, fluffy seed heads.

 

I can't choose just one, Clara Lou.
Every year I award prizes in my garden under different headings - longest flowering, most unexpected performance etc.
This year my longest flowering selection is the same as Sussexgardeners. The Bowles mauve and clematis tangutica have flowered all summer and are still doing it.
Best new addition goes to the roses. I screened off my kitchen garden with trellis fencing and planted climbing roses to make a rose wall. It has been just gorgeous and still getting roses.

I'll have a look of that Salvia Patens of yours for next year.

 

Morning Glory, Ipomoea tricolor.

Have tried and failed to grow them from seed for about 4 years now. This year, success!

They're now up to the top of the drainpipe and flowering their heads off.

 

I think my favourite, again, has got to be the wonderful Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) outside our bedroom window. Not only did the plants come through the winter unscathed but they grew to their usual eight feet plus and flowered beautifully!:thumb:

Chris

 

My best plant/plants this year has to be Lobelia Speciosa. I have it in four colours and they have all been beautiful this year and still all going strong.

 

Courgettes....not the most attractive plant I've got but my goodness we had such a glut of fruit from it this year

 

My star find for this year must be the Lofos , Lophospermum scandens. A climber with beautiful vine shaped leaves and wine red foxglove type flowers. Its grown to 7 feet and still looks 100%.:D

 

Same here Marley - even ones planted this year:thumb:

 

Agapanthus Enigma with it's porcelain like white and blue flowers .

 

If I may - I should like to enter three categories.


Most spectacular - Brugmansia. At its best it had twice as many flowers - but I never took a picture.


Best do'er. Geranium 'Patricia'. Unlike the Brugmansia, whose flowers are short lived, this Geranium looked good for months on end.


Longest flowering. Salvia splendens - the species. This one was flowering as a cutting last October before it had even rooted, and it has now been in continuous flower for 11 months. Its parent did exactly the same last year.

 

Peter, the S. Splendens seeds you sent me germinated and the plant is flowering, but I didn't know it would survive as a cutting over winter. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow!