For summer, the Gardens’ staff create much admired tender plant displays in the bed to the west of the pavilions and in the bed outside South Lodge on the Thompson Road drive.  See in the latter bed extraordinary Solanum atropurpureum!

Growing in the East Ridge and Furrow area of the Pavilions, here is one of the ginger lilies, its handsome foliage rising along the stems from stout rhizomes.

Salvias have become very popular over recent years, but Salvia patens, the Gentian sage, has been used in British gardens for the past two centuries. The great Victorian gardener William Robinson wrote in his book, The English Flower Garden, that ‘It is one of the best plants in cultivation, the intense blue of its flowers making it a charming object. Though tender in most gardens, the tuberous roots are easily wintered in a frost-proof place’.

Entering the Gardens from the Thompson Road entrance, one cannot help but be totally entranced by the exotic bed outside the South Lodge. Standing proudly in the centre of these tropical plants is the ‘hardy’ Japanese banana Musa basjoo. There is no better plant for achieving a tropical effect.

Originating from the woodlands of Georgia, Alabama and the south-eastern states of the USA, the Bottlebrush Buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, can easily be missed.

This is a particularly beautiful American elder, related to our common elder of hedges and copses. This plant was one of the 'Restoration plantings' of 2004, and is situated on the edge of Osborns Field (area J).

There is no doubt that some of the near tropical weather we have been having recently has been beneficial to some plants in the Gardens. Planted in 2016, this Albizia julibrissin, also known as the silk tree, originating from Iran, east to China, has really flourished.