An excellent greenhouse or conservatory foliage plant this much improved once rare variety has recently become more widely available. The original plain green Fatsia japonica has long been useful as a decorative foliage plant for shady cool positions and has proved just hardy enough to go outside in summer or even permanently in sheltered courtyards […]

Anyone visiting your greenhouse will be intrigued by this. A real surprise, a tasty herb and an edible plant I’d never tried before. And when I tell you the genus I’m sure it will surprise you as well. The cheerful yellow flowers are a give-away, does their colour remind you of anything? These are an […]

Here’s a challenging greenhouse plant combining delightful perfume, charming almost fern like foliage, usefully catching flies, with another even more macabre habit. Dewy Pine, Drosophyllum lusitanicum, is unique, truly carnivorous, one of THE most effective fly catchers, yet unlike almost all others not a bog plant. Apparently this can also survive passing undergrowth fires, probably […]

An excellent greenhouse subject Eucomis comosa has lush green foliage (spotted with purple markings underneath) from which emerge long lasting spires of pretty blooms that grace us for many weeks from mid-summer through till autumn. Not hardy enough for most to risk outdoors this attractive bulb is a close relative of our Hyacinths and Ornithogalum […]

Of the many greenhouse and conservatory plants few tick all boxes. That eternal quest for all-the-year-round interest in foliage, compact, neat with long lasting flowers good for cutting, lots of colour, scented in whole or part, possibly also edible, and of course, easy. Few indeed, however the Peruvian Lily does, moreover in myriad varieties only […]

Brighten up your greenhouse with tubs of colourful Fountain Grasses in red, crimson or purple marked foliage. Good splashes of colour these are especially useful amongst taller plants camouflaging bare stems or disguising tubs. Fountain Grasses are remarkably easy to care for with minimal attention yet respond with luxuriant displays throughout the growing season. The […]

Our greenhouses are graced with many from the Malvaceae family: Abutilons, Okra, Sorrel and Hibiscus, all somewhat resembling our wild Mallows possessing mucilaginous sap and attractive flowers. Amongst these the tropical Hibiscus are famously large, flamboyant and popular as cut flowers so often seen in tropical hotels as slow to wilt in the heat. And […]

An almost forgotten scented plant ideal for a greenhouse is Mignonette. Allegedly a ’discovery’ of Napoleon, who sent seed to Empress Josephine from his Egyptian campaign in 1798 (Reseda odorata grows wild in N. Africa). Her followers adopted Mignonette (French for ‘little darling’) which soon became fashionable, especially in pots for perfuming balconies and terraces. […]

Celosias were first introduced from the Far East in the Sixteenth century before there were more than a handful of greenhouses so were not easy. Once the heated greenhouse became available then this relation of Amaranthus became immensely popular with over sixty species discovered and introduced from Africa, Asia and the Americas. Then they generally […]

So why on Earth would you want to grow this in your greenhouse? Well, because this is a living ‘pot pourri’. A South American relative of Asters it’s delightful though as the disparaging quote from Paxton’s Botanical Dictionary suggests it’s neither graceful, compact, neat nor colourful. Thus certainly not a centrepiece, nor a background foliage […]