3 hours ago
4
A friend’s husband has recently embarked on a love affair with an allotment plot. I’m totally delighted for him, and am enjoying the new dimension of our relationship, in which we discuss compost and seed sowing over WhatsApp, and he sends me photographs of the “lotty”. It reminds me of when someone has a newborn – you get to marvel at the progress with none of the hard work.
Recently he texted me a screen grab from my Instagram stories, of a photo of my old garden. “What is this plant? There’s loads on the abandoned plot next to mine.” Sedum, I replied. Well, hylotelephium, technically.
Some sedum varieties were reclassified in 1977, long before I existed, let alone started gardening, yet I still know them as sedums. Hylotelephium spectabile refers to the herbaceous, bushy variety that offers so much bang for its buck in borders, dry gardens and pots – a rare plant to do all three so well – for months on end. Particularly good at this time of year is H. herbstfreude (the name translates as “autumn joy”).
I still remember picking one up for my first balcony garden about this time of year, not knowing what it was or what to do with it, but being happily astonished when tight green leaves started to appear at its crown at the start of spring. Before then, you have a mass of colour that is both brilliant and somehow subtle: rich pigments of deep pinks and reds, perfect for autumn days and beloved by bees, which fades into structural umbellifers that dry nicely for vases. Most of the ones in my old garden were divisions of one my mother had in our childhood garden, which now also proliferate in her small townhouse garden and my sister’s patch not far from me (I’ll be taking a division for my new garden when the time is right.)
But I also had the softer-hued H. telephium subsp. ruprechtii ‘Pink Dome’, which I fell for in Beth Chatto’s nursery (its gravel garden demonstrates just how drought-tolerant sedums can be), which blends maroon foliage with palest pink flowers. Chatto says sedums are “peacemakers”, offering “interest for almost every month of the year” while showier specimens throw a strop.
after newsletter promotion
The main thing hylotelephiums don’t like is being too wet or overfed – powdery mildew and floppy stems can set in, respectively. But in truth you have to try pretty hard to kill one: they thrive on dry, poor soil, and do better with some sunshine. A “Chelsea chop” – cutting back the stems by a third or ven a half in late May or early June – can prolong flowering, but you’ll still get a good showing until October or even later without.
