Oops, I accidentally posted this again, readers! I wish WordPress would make it a bit more difficult to publish. Anyhoo, here’s the complete post, and sorry for any confusion…

Dear Readers, we have certainly picked a good couple of weeks for our holiday – after a damp day on Sunday the weather looks pretty good for the rest of the time, so today we took a bus trip to the Sunshine Garden Centre in Bounds Green, North London. I really love this place – the staff are friendly and knowledgeable, and it always has a great range of plants. Today I was really looking for plant supports for my hemp agrimony, but as usual I couldn’t resist some of the other plants. Just as well we were travelling on the bus, which meant there was a limit to what I could buy. When I visit with my friend J, who has a people-mover with plenty of room for plant passengers it’s very easy to get carried away.

Just look at this lot! What looks like rows of lettuce is in fact a fine array of different Heuchera cultivars, some in dark purple, some in lime green, some bright yellow and some with coral-coloured leaves. They don’t have enough pollinator-appeal for my small garden, where every plant needs to punch above its weight, but they looked very pretty nonetheless, and are very versatile.

We sat outside the café with a cup of coffee and a scone (just one between us in a rare display of self-control). The waitress is a nurse in her other life, and is currently working at a flu-jab clinic. Everyone is apparently asking what is happening with the covid boosters, but of course the people who have to administer them are the ones who are the last to know when the vaccine is arriving and what the procedure is meant to be.

‘If only I had Boris’s private number’, she said. ‘I’d get them all to ring him up’.

And what a fine solution that would be.

In the end I bought three white hellebores, which will hopefully be happy under the lilac tree.

Christmas roses/hellebores

And a giant Japanese anemone, as the small ones don’t seem to be able to cope under the whitebeam, so hopefully this one will be a bit more robust and live up to its invasive nature. So many of the plants that other people refer to as thugs become delicate in my garden and gradually fade away. Fingers crossed!

Japanese anemone