The tall girl in the school photo

Gardening is so much about inspiration and visualization and to be a great creative gardener you need to have the inspiration to visualize where a plant should go, along with the dedication and application to make your vision a reality.

I will never be a great creative gardener. I buy plants the way I used to buy clothes, with no real thought of what the item will go with, simply because it looked interesting. This is why men need partners. As I tend to go down to the garden centre on my own, I’m particularly vulnerable to the knee-jerk impulse buy. Especially as Squires have so much temptation on offer.

Along with the visualization of what will look good, must come some knowledge of a plant’s shape, it’s height and form. Writing with the Rio Olympics in the background I must confess to my own Personal Best of putting the wrong plant in the wrong place this year.

How about sticking a plant that is 1.5 metres tall at the front of a bed of perennials… Yes, that’s right, that's a PB that is unlikely to be beaten this side of Tokyo 2020.

This is the year I managed to stick four Verbena plants at the front of a bed and then watch them grow like Topsy. It was so inappropriate, like hedging with delphiniums, or grassing the patio. After a while they began to lean self-consciously to the side, like the tall girl in the school photo who’s desperately trying to look inconspicuous.

Now I know that Verbena can grow quite tall, but the truth is, I didn’t know these were Verbena. I had got one of Thompson and Morgan’s late-season offers for some bargain plug-plants, five different perennials, six of each. They cost something like 5p, with £9 postage and packing.

They had gone straight into the cold frame to be over-wintered and when they came out I couldn’t remember which were which. In fact I couldn’t really remember what I’d bought, they were so tiny when they arrived and I threw the container away.

Up until now my best border placement had been a Michaelmas Daisy I got from Picton’s nursery, holders of the National Collection, in Colwall. I planted the variety ‘Purple Dome’ right at the back of the beds and it grew to 20cms. It occasionally peeps out at me, with a kind of, ‘did you really mean this?’

Now, I know the inclusion of the word ‘dome’ in the name should have rung some warning bells, but I must have been hoping it was a big dome, like the O2, and not a small, insignificant dome, like Iain Duncan-Smith’s head.

Hopefully I’ll remember to move it this winter. The Verbenas are definitely going to swap places. They are no doubt excited by the fact that I’ve managed to germinate some Echium pininana again and will be overshadowed by a 2-metre-tall ‘foxglove’some time in the future. Although being a biennial a lot can happen in between.

FH