Gardeners’ Question Time
Matthew Pottage
Catthew is the curator of RHS Garden Wisley, the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society in Surrey.
Matt Biggs
Matt trained at Kew and has been gardening professionally for more than 30 years.
Pippa Greenwood
Pippa is one of the foremost experts on pests and diseases. She gardens using organic methods.
Q What narrow shrubs can I grow in my sunny border?
Barbara Orton, Hertfordshire
A MATTHEW SAYS A real favourite plant of mine for a sunny space that has little width, is the wonderfully upright Frangula alnus ‘Fine Line’, which has masses of fine leaves that give the overall look of a fluffy, green fox tail.
It’s quite slow growing but has such character it will make impact from day one. Plant a group of three closely if you can for real presence. It is deciduous and has a lovely golden autumn leaf colour.
For an evergreen alternative, how about the elegant Mahonia eurybracteata ganpinensis ‘Soft Caress’? This won the Plant of the Year award at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show a few years back. It offers lovely ferny foliage, without the thorns of most mahonia, and has a scented yellow flower in early autumn.
You could edge the border with something small and well behaved like Origanum ‘Barbara Tingey’ or the hardy blue-flowered plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides.
A Try upright elderflowers. ‘Black Tower’ forms a dense column of purple-black leaves. The flattened clusters of small, pink and white flowers‘Pyramidalis’ is similar but with crinkled, dark-green, tightly packed leaves and clusters of small, white flowers in early summer.
