Spires to inspire

EVEN in the garden, reputations continue to rise and fall dictated no less by demand than by changing fashion.

Yesterday’s favourite is tomorrow’s abomination, and perhaps our much loved hellebores will one day be rejected by posterity.

Spring bedding is sadly a thing of the past, and the ferns of our forefathers are no longer visited upon us children. Grasses seem to be all the rage, so too prairie plantings, and foliage plants with spiralled, long-stalked, full-divided leaves sold (very expensively) under the name schefflera. From this you will see that tastes, of necessity, change, and change is often cruel. To none has fashion been crueller than to delphinia, those tall, stately border plants which are the mainstay stars of late June and early July.