| Something a little different in the popular sweet-pea-bush, a compact grower with glaucous leaves and rich pink/purple flowers. This evergreen shrub tolerates poor soils and dry conditions. A light clip early in spring will encourage new growth and a spring flush of flowers that will last until summer, and repeatedly spot flower almost all year round. Lovely contrast with white-flowered underplantings. | ||||||||||
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One of those shrubs which happily flowers on and on, barely pausing through the year. The rich purple-pink flowers look good with the blue-green foliage and dusky pink stems and leaf tips of the new growths. Don’t let the good looks of this shrub fool you though, its actually a tough customer capable of performing exceptionally in dry, poor soils and windy situations.
It would look great on a bank or sunny border with Euphorbia characias, which has lime green flowers in late winter and spring, or the grey-green foliage of native Euphorbia glauca. It could also make an intriguing background to lavenders such as ‘Major’, deep pink annual cosmos, perennial Gaura ‘Siskyou Pink’, or annual sweet peas in summer. Or it could be used an interesting dwarf, informal hedge - no, it won’t trim into a dense wall of foliage as the real hedging plants do, but with a bit of trimming in early spring it will stay compact.