To comply with government guidelines we have closed our office. We will continue to respond to emails.
SEED latest: Your seeds are on their way - the last of the UK seed orders were dispatched on Wednesday March 3rd.
A registered charity promoting hardy herbaceous plants, we grow and study these plants in our own gardens, and try to keep rarer varieties in cultivation. We share our knowledge and love of these plants with other gardeners whether they're experts, beginners or somewhere in between.
Online Talks Some HPS groups are happy to welcome others to their online talks. If you might like to attend one, you can find a list in the members area. Please use the link on that list to contact the group directly for more details. |
 Recently published… the new HPS booklet, Border Phlox, is here. Phlox have been popular garden plants for over 250 years and are starting to flower now, from July through to September. Phlox add colour and perfume to summer borders and this book is packed with information to help you grow them, as well as descriptions and colour photos of many cultivars. |
I've mainly seen large buff-tailed bumblebee queens (Bombus terrestris), making a bee-line for my crocus flowers. Once woken up by warm temperatures the queens have to find nectar quickly or they will starve. It was also warm enough for honeybees ...
A plant name mystery has been discovered in the Conservation Scheme database. In January Cathy Rollinson posted on the Conservation Scheme Facebook page that the plant we list as Persicaria runcinata Needham’s form is probably really Persicaria sinuata. She found this after reading the description on the website of Growild Nursery, which now lists it as Persicaria sinuata EN. So which is it?
The first snowdrop garden I ever visited was Hodsock Priory on the borders between Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire during the 1990’s. They especially open round half term to allow people to walk through the formal gardens and down to the woodland where there is massed planting of Galanthus nivalis under beech trees:-
The early flowers such as the winter aconites, snowdrops and Cyclamen coum were completely unfazed by the snow and looked like nothing had happened after the snow had melted away. It is amazing that such delicate-looking flowers are so tough ...
