Postage : Seeds only $4 / Plants $20
A biennial poppy of poor dry soils around the Mediterranean Sea eastwards into Iran. Producing 5cm, burnt orange, saucer shaped flowers throughout the baking summer on sprawling, branching stems from appealing rosettes of hairy, blue-grey, pinnate leaves. Valuable summer colour with sumptuous mediterranen foliaged shrubs Euphorbia, Cistus, Santolina etc.
Exposure, excellent drainage and summer dryness are essential for best performance with alkaline coastal sands being ideal, though it's more tolerant of heavier soil and interior conditions than the yellow flowered G. flavum.
Rich soil will inevitably yield a leafy vegetable that flowers poorly and lives but briefly. If it persists for more than two years and self seeds then congratulations at having far greater garden potential than copious irrigation and soil improvers can ever provide.
An aromatic, evergreen shrub. A stockier plant than typical L.dentata, densely clothed with thicker, broader, grey green leaves. Spikes of showy, bright purple bracts are carried on 10cm long stems throughout the warmer months of the year.
Cut down to half yearly in summer, to maintain a compact form.
A stunning perennial groundcover now extinct in its native home the Canary Islands. The soft, trailing mat of whorled, grey-green linear leaves smothers in fiery clusters of red and orange beak-like flowers throughout spring.
A quick growing, nitrogen fixing legume, traditionally regarded as a potted annual. In our ideal climate it also a hardy groundcover for well drained, sunny sites and is at its best in alkaline sand. Simulate its natural habitat by draping it down a limestone retaining wall or cliff, or just mass it for unbridled colour.
Somewhat deciduous over summer, when over watering usually proves fatal. Frost tender. Easily propagated by cuttings.