You never know what unexpected treasure you might find at a plant sale. A few years ago, Suffolk gardener Evelyn Gage took home a tray of mixed foxglove seedlings from a plant stall. When they bloomed, one of them opened to display unusual, primrose-yellow and wine-spotted trumpets. Gage knew she was on to something special, so she called in Thompson & Morgan, the seed company. Its breeders went to work on her foxglove and refined it into a dwarf variety, 30 inches high, with flowers all around the stem - perfect for romantic borders, large containers and exposed conditions.
Digitalis `Primrose Carousel', as it is now called, features prominently in Thompson & Morgan's current catalogue - along with the heartwarming story of its origins. And all over this seed company's worldwide catchment area, gardeners - heartstrings tweaked into a state of mushy malleability - are dutifully filling in their order forms with Digitalis `Primrose Carousel' at the top of the list. I too have fallen for this foxglove, even though I know that I have been deftly manipulated by its purveyors. But I don't mind really, it's part of the dream I buy into every year around this time, when the seed catalogues, those persuasive pamphlets of promise, give me hope for the future.
This year, Thompson & Morgan have also produced a greenfly-resistant butterhead lettuce, `Dynamite', and a bird-resistant runner bean, `White Lady', whose white blossoms are less likely than traditional red flowers to be pecked at by our flying friends.
One of the prettiest runner beans is `Painted Lady', a red-and-white flowered variety that is 150 years old (from Suttons, Mr Fothergill's Kitchen Garden, The Organic Gardening Catalogue). It looks quite at home in the flower border, as do most runner beans - after all, they were originally introduced to Europe from America as ornamental flowering climbers.
In my garden, the birds don't bother the beans - whatever their flower-colour - although the sparrows eagerly strip the crimson petals off the flowering quince. But I don't mind, they repay me a hundredfold with their flighty antics as they go about their self-important business. Every year I grow annual treats for them, such as sunflowers (available from most seed companies), Lagurus ovatus, or hare's tail grass (Chiltern, Mr Fothergill's Enthusiasts Collection, Thompson & Morgan, Unwins), red orache or Atriplex hortensis var. rubra (similar varieties available from Chiltern, Thompson & Morgan) and opium poppies (Chiltern, Thompson & Morgan). And each year, the tall primeval-looking biennial, teasel (available from Chiltern), seeds itself about. It is said to attract goldfinches, those colourful clowns of the finch family. This year, to my delight, it did: a trio of the feathered little jokers with their curious, clinking call.
Tall plants, such as teasel, give any garden a special drama. And because many are anchored to the ground by long tap-roots, they grow best from seed, rather than cuttings. Digitalis (the foxglove genus) and verbascum (or mullein) are easy, as neither is particularly fussy or greatly troubled by pests. Chiltern, Mr Fothergill's Enthusiasts Collection and Thompson & Morgan have good selections of both.
Of course, the emperor of tall plants is the echium. This slightly tender member of the borage family has long, hairy or bristly leaves that range from silver-grey to dark-green, and rocket-like flower spikes crammed with hundreds - or even thousands - of tiny tubes in colours from pink to blue. The huskiest of them all is Echium pininana (Chiltern, Thompson & Morgan), but perhaps more graceful is the hybrid (from Chiltern) produced by crossing this with the more elegant species E. wildpretii. Bees go mad for echiums, including the little annual version E. vulgare (widely available).
This year, according to Unwins catalogue, is the 300th anniversary of the introduction of the sweet pea into Britain. To celebrate, they've got 70 different varieties. A new one is `Sir Cliff' whose "warm rosy-purple colouring epitomises the image of one of Britain's most popular singers . . . Like Sir Cliff, it's an exuberant performer, giving lots of long stems for flower arrangement and exhibition."
The vegetable equivalent of Sir Cliff - at least as regards longevity and exuberance - would seem to be the leafy Japanese mizuna greens (Chiltern, Mr Fothergill's Kitchen Garden, The Organic Gardening Catalogue). A cut-and-come-again crop, "it goes on forever - whatever the weather - and comes thicker and thicker each time" or so says Holly Barnes of Deelish Garden Centre in Skibbereen. The leafy stems can be used raw, blanched, boiled or stir fried. I'll certainly be adding it to my vegetable patch this year.
And finally, I mentioned a few weeks ago that the pretty South African plant Orphium frutescens was unknown in Ireland. I'm happy to report that it grows in the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, where it was supplied by master plantsman and seed propagator, Carl Dacus (who was far too modest to correct my gaffe). Carl has recently started a mail-order business providing hundreds of unusual plants, all grown in his Co Dublin nursery. Of special interest to plant collectors are the sweet-scented Daphne blagayana, the scarlet-flowered patio and rockery plant Satureja seleriana ("never out of flower, but slightly tender"), the South African Senecio speciosus - a perennial with deep-pink flowers, and one of the most headilyscented roses `Fortune's Double Yellow' which grows best with its feet in a glasshouse and its stems sneaking out into the open.