For the past week, I have been office and desk-bound, with not a moment spent in my own garden, or anyone else's. Now that's tough!
So for today's blog I'm forced to wind the clock back a couple of months to my first ever visit to The Lizard in Cornwall, but what happy memories.
I've long known about the place, and how the serpentine rock allows plants to grow that are either very rare or indeed are unique to the area. What is of added interest is how some of the plants are ones that are quite widely grown in gardens.
Perhaps the one that I most wanted to see was the Cornish Heath, a knee-high heather than grows almost nowhere else at all in Britain, but on The Lizard it seems to grow everywhere. One of my plant books describes it as the 'commonest rare plant in Britain' and they were right. I didn't have to hunt to find this one - it was on all the road verges!
In later September, it was still smothered in flowers, which are usually pink or lilac but sometimes white. As the flowers go over, the spent heads turn a warm umber, adding to the richness of the colour mix. And this was the prime plant I saw for nectaring bumblebees, given that so many other flowers were long gone over.
Garden centres that sell heathers will often have it marked by its Latin name, Erica vagans, and I'm sure many gardeners are totally unaware that what they are growing is this Cornish speciality. You will need a warm, dry, acid soil to grow it well.
The other 'garden plant' I was eager to see was Bloody Cranesbill Geranium sanguineum. There were only a few flowers left, but they included this one above the glorious Kynance Cove.
Now this is a plant that many of you probably already grow, it having such richly-coloured flowers but growing on a neat mound of foliage barely 20cm high. Once again, this is a great nectar plant in gardens when in full bloom earlier in the season.
It's so educational to see familiar garden plants out in their element (and in the case of the Cornish coast, out in the elements!) - you feel you are getting to see an old friend in their home for the first time.