Wordless Wednesday - 04/05/11 - Golden Pride - coloured leaf pelargonium

Golden Pride

Wedding Royale

Wedding Royale

Congratulations and best wishes to the Royal couple on their Wedding Day.

Wedding Royale is a compact gold leaf zonal pelargonium with a chestnut zone.  It is a rosebud type with tight rose pink flowers, which resemble rose buds as they open.  

Introduced in 1982 by John Thorpe, Wedding Royale was raised by Dick Smith of Hinckly, Near Leicestershire.  It is believed that it may have been named for the wedding of Prince William's parents, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981.   This makes sense as it would not have been released until the following year.

Wedding Royale is a really lovely pelargonium and one that I would like to have in my collection again.

Photograph has been reproduced with the kind permission of Fibrex Nursery, Pebworth, Nr. Stratford upon Avon, holders of the National Collection of Pelargoniums.

Wordless Wednesday - 27/04/11 - 'Filigree' - Coloured Leaf Pelargonium

'Filigree' - Coloured Leaf Pelargonium

Madame Salleron - buyer beware

With Easter upon us and a very fine weekend forecast, this is traditionally a very busy time at Garden Centres.    Here in the UK they won't be open on Easter Sunday, but Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Monday they will be and all will have their summer bedding plants prominently displayed.

It is, therefore, a good time to write about the pelargonium 'Madame Salleron', sometimes named as 'Madame Salleroi'.  

Madame Salleron

'Madame Salleron' has small silver bi-coloured leaves growing densely on a dwarf zonal type plant.
It does not flower!  This pelargonium was introduced in 1877 and was used by the Victorians as an edging plant to their formal bedding displays, to which it is ideally suited.

Should your 'Madame Salleron' produce a dark salmon coloured single flower, then it has sported to 'Litlte Trot'.  As you will see from the photo below, the leaves have a similar dense growth habit.

Little Trot

For the past four years or so, Garden Centres have been offering for sale a silver bi-coloured pelargonium  named Madame Salleron.  The plant has a single bright bright rose pink flower and should correctly be named 'Petals'.   'Petals' is a short jointed dwarf pelargonium introduced in the U.K. by Clifton in 1972.

Petals

Quite why the big growers have decided the change the name of this charming plant, no one knows.   Probably because 'Madam Salleron' is a more commercial name than 'Petals'.

It you look carefully at the photo's you will note that 'Madame Sallaron' has a wider uneven white margin.  In fact, some leaves can be almost white with very little green.

You may remember the French babies - the seedlings that cousin Sue found in her pots of pelargoniums last October when we tidied them up for the winter.  She brought them home and potted them up and my last photo of them in February showed some very health looking seedlings.   As Sue was to be away for about four weeks I was asked to take charge of them.  With the fine weather we have been having these baby seedlings have grown into fine 'children' and when Sue took them home last week she potted them up into their own pots.

Wordless Wednesday 20/04/11 - 'Faerie Fable' - Coloured leaf Pelargonium

Coloured leaf pelargonium 'Faerie Fable'

Freak of Nature and garden flowers

One pelargonium that stands out in the greenhouse is Freak of Nature.  Apart from the stunning single vermillion red flowers, it is the unusual white leaves edged in green that catch the eye.   It is a dwarf and slow growing pelargonium on stems which are also white.   This is not a new variety, having been introduced by a Mr Gray in 1880. It is not often offered by nurseries and, although not easy to propogate, I would not be without this variety.

Spring has arrived - the garden is beginning to burst with bloom.  It has been unusually warm and very dry with no rain for four weeks and, having emptied the water butts, I have resorted to using a hose on the vegetables.   Watering the plants in the  greenhouse has become an almost daily task.

Azalea

Bluebell & Euphorbia

Clematis Armandiii

White 'blue' bells

Erodium trifolium

Golden leavs of Geranium 'Ann Folkard'

Spirea

Hosta 'Geisha'

 

Hosta Pilgrim

Forget-me-not

White 'blue'bell



Coming back from a shopping trip on Saturay morning I noticed a large number of dandelion weeds which had suddenly flowered in the garden.  After lunch I set too to weed them out.  However, I was struck by how amazingly beautiful they actually are, and could not resist taking this picture.