Calamagrostis ‘Overdam’ makes a lovely tussock of creamy white striped leaves. The stiffly vertical flower spikes, mauve pink aging to gold, are produced in summer. It needs a little summer irrigation and is happy in sun or light shade. Although the foliage clumps are, more...

This late summer/autumn flowering shrub has thrived in a really tough spot in the dry garden for years. As the marvellous rich dark blue flowers are produced on new seasons wood it’s best to cut Caryopteris to near ground level during winter. 90cm x 80cm.

This vigorous evergreen shrub, with dark green glossy leaves, has grown 150cm tall by 3 metres wide in my garden where it is planted in a hot dry sunny spot. During late winter and spring large heads of gentian blue flowers, less strident than C. ‘Blue Pacific’, make a, more...

A hybrid between Catalpa bignoniodes and Chilepsis linearis this rare, deciduous small tree is ideally suited to our dry inland gardens as well as coastal areas which aren’t humid during summer. For several months, from early summer until autumn, heads of large gloxinia-like, more...

There can hardly be a better carpeting plant than this dark flowered form of Convolvulus sabatius. In our dry climate garden it makes dense yard wide mats of evergreen foliage thickly studded with sky gazing round deep blue moons. We cut it back to about 15cm during early, more...

A new release and something quite different as this dwarf Dutch selection is grown as much for its precocious flowering, with each shoot carrying a frothy smokey pink flower head, as for its brilliant autumn colour. It is reputed to grow a mere 1.5 metres tall by as much, more...