Garden Design

Charlotte and I with two of Blueberry Park’s most dedicated volunteers.

Each of our Garden Crusader winners is someone very special, doing something amazing in his or her community. Unfortunately, we don’t always have the opportunity to get to know every one of them personally. But in the fall of 2008 I spent the good part of a day with Garden Crusader Charlotte Valbert of Tacoma, Washington.

Charlotte had agreed to give me a tour of Blueberry Park, the project for which she’d received the award. Though the park was just a few blocks from her house, it took almost an hour to get there.

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Many gardeners appreciate the steely blue and silver tones of prickly eryngiums, jostling among summer sun-lovers.

But there is a whole group of rosette-forming eryngiums that perform much later in the year. They produce small clusters of teasel-like flowers on strong, fleshy stems and their substantial spikes sway above rosettes of jagged, linear leaves.

By autumn, the rigid flower spikes punctuate the air as the bobble-like flowers mature from pale green to dark chocolate – providing a winter silhouette.

These rosette-forming, tap-rooted eryngiums often come from damp grassy areas in Central and South America, and their prickly leaves are a defence to deter grazing animals.

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Trachelium caeruleum.

Trachelium species are native to the Mediterranean and thus make themselves at home in our climate. T. caeruleum can reach 4 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide and is multi-branching and dense when given sufficient water. In late spring, plants bear pointed, lance-shaped, toothed mid-green leaves to 3 inches. This finely textured, dark-tinged growth is followed in midsummer by dome-shaped corymbs, rising on red-flushed stalks of tiny, vivid violet flowers. Flowering continues for two to three months or more and even first-year flowering can be impressive on this vigorous perennial.

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Last week, more than 1, towns and villages across the country were in fierce competition to reap the benefit of the Britain in Bloom awards. William Langley reports

A nod from Jim can raise house prices, attract businesses, bring in tourists and secure council grants. Towns will do a lot to please him. Sometimes, too much. One hired a stretch-limo to ferry him around in luxury. “The bloody thing had blacked-out windows,” he huffs.

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