Gardening: Three wonderful plants to add a splash of colour to your garden

Hypericum androsaemum is a pretty, deciduous shrub which will soon grow to be three feet high and three feet wide. But it’s hardy, self-fertile and can tolerate most soils, including alkaline ones. It can grow happily in full sun or partial shade, so it should survive any garden. The one thing it doesn’t like is a salty wind, so it’s not a seaside plant.

The flowers are sunshine yellow but the berries are poisonous, so it pays to keep children and animals well away from them.

It’s one of a large genus of flowering plants in the family Hypericaceae, members of which can be found virtually throughout the world.

Many of the species are regarded as invasive or noxious weeds but, at the other extreme, Hypericum perforatum (aka St John’s wort ) is used to treat mild and moderate depression, and sometimes seasonal affective disorder (SAD), anxiety and sleep problems. It can also be used to make a tea.

In the wild it can be found in open woods, along hedgerows and roadside verges, and on waste ground. Its bright yellow flowers appear from June to September.

Others – even if they are just as invasive and poisonous - are grown because they bring so much to the garden. For example, H calycinum is a lovely low-growing shrub with those bright yellow, cup-shaped blooms can still be blooming in November. True, the flowers are far less numerous than what they were a few months ago, but they are still showing.

This is a plant that will spread rapidly, which makes it ideal for clothing barren ground and for stabilizing banks where little else will grow.

It is invasive and needs hacking back to ground level every spring; even then, it can still spread and colonise.

Far more accommodating, and far taller, is H ‘Hidcote’, the choice of the more-discerning and less energetic gardener who simply wants a shrub that will reliably produce masses of stunning golden-yellow blooms right up until the first frosts and it rarely seeks to bully other plants.

Roses

Just look at that most English of English picture-perfect gardens – the country cottage with roses and honeysuckle clambering around the door and along the eves. It’s a pretty picture, perfect for biscuit tins and chocolate boxes.

It was Nature who came up with the original – wild roses and wild honeysuckle perfuming the hedgerows on England. She patented the idea and, thankfully, it’s still growing strong outside man- (and woman-) made gardens.

The dog rose is one of those essential parts of summer, although it’s not around very long to enjoy the sunshine. It normally has one mad burst of lightly-scented, usually pink flowers, although some blooms can be white. Established plants can produce hundreds of flowers within a few weeks – then they fade and die before shrubs are weighed down by masses of vivid-coloured hips.

The stems of Rosa canina may be armoured with numerous thorns but they prove no barrier to birds which value those hips as a vital part of their autumn diet to enable them to fatten up before the onset of winter when food is scarce.

Those prickles, however, are another reason why gardeners choose to grow the dog rose, usually as informal hedging – the spines act as a barrier to deter unwanted visitors, both human and animal.

The dog rose is native to Britain where it has taken root in hedgerows throughout the country. It grows best in full sun and in moderately fertile, humus-rich, moist but well-drained soil.

Anyone wanting to grow it needs to provide it with just those conditions and it will thrive.

Elder

Elders are one of the great success stories of Nature. They have long been a stalwart of hedges where they grow quickly and abundantly, particularly if the soil is fertile, humus-rich and moist but well-drained.

They are hardy and prolific and although the bog-standard variety is not usually welcomed in a neat and tidy English garden, there are a few unusual sorts that can be planted to add to a mixed border or be a specimen worth cultivating.

The purple forms, such as Sambucus nigra ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Black Lace’, are fast becoming eye-catching additions to the cultivated garden. They, too, like decent soil and, if possible, plenty of sun to help produce these lovely, fragrant pale-pink florets surrounded by distinctive, almost black, dissected leaves. In autumn, the shrubs weighed down with berries which are loved by birds.

Elder is a shrub/tree steeped in folklore - in some areas, the elder tree was supposed to ward off evil influence and give protection from witches, while other beliefs say that witches often congregate under the plant, especially when it is full of fruit.

In some regions, superstition, religious belief, or tradition prohibits the cutting of certain trees for bonfires – burn an elder and you’d be cursed. And if an elder tree was cut down, a spirit known as the Elder Mother would be released and take her revenge.

Thankfully, there were – and still are – good things about Sambucus nigra notably making elderflower cordial or ‘champagne’ from the flowers, and wine from the berries.