It is a repeated refrain but it has been a tough year and the garden will be devoid of flowers compared with last year. Zinnias have perished in the cold and sunflowers were devoured by slugs and snails. dreams of ostrich-feather displays of Russian statice are gone as the plants rotted in the cold, wet soil, though oddly the neighbouring cleomes are doing fine.

So perhaps my standards are lower than they would usually be but the clear stars of the garden so far are diascias. I did mention the plant last year

Diascia personata has been brilliant. Diascias are still not that common though the dwarf, bedding kinds are popular for patio pots. When I was a student at Kew they were virtually unknown and ‘Ruby Field’ was the most common, grown as an alpine but odd because it was not considered hardy. It was used as a bedding plant – decades ahead of the curve.

They are now a pretty diverse group of plants but most often seen as small, edging plants. Diascia personata is different. It is tall and my year-old plants are 2m high. They have wiry, steel-strong stems and although they often flop from the base, once they start growing upwards they are very strong. They bloom for ages. My plants started in May and will keep going till the frosts of autumn. I did not lose any of them in the winter. And what surprised me is that they all survived even in rather wet soil where shrubs have died over winter through waterlogging. That is some achievement.

The most effective plants are around the butia palm which provides some support. I have also discovered that the stems also make very effective cut flowers and last well in water.

Last year I bought a random dwarf diascia to add to a pot and at the end of the season I yanked it out, roughly potted it and kept it ticking over in the greenhouse. I watered it in spring and took small softwood cuttings of the young shoots. They rooted rapidly, as diascias tend to do and I had a dozen or so plants to use in the narrow bed beside the drive.* They have been amazing and have really cheered me up. I will keep an eye open for a few more diascias and will rely on them more next year.

*For those who are horrified by formal ‘Victorian’ bedding beside the drive I did have a row of roses but winter wet was an issue so the ‘blue’ roses underplanted with blue hostas did not work. So the hostas have stayed and the roses have been moved. The beds may stay empty in winter now and bedding will go in in summer. The summer planting was supposed to be all agastache and monarda but the snails ate most of the seedlings so I had to compromise. And here is a less formal area of the garden with pink filipendula, rhombus ‘Fine Line’ and hardy banana.

diascia personata