Plants connected with islands

This week it’s:

ISLANDS may be a bit of a surprise subject to cover in a gardening magazine, but there are many links between plants, gardening and, yes, islands. Some of our finest gardens are on islands (one of my favourite gardens of all time is on my favourite island of them all – Tresco, one of the Scilly Isles).

And there are hundreds of currently available plants listed in the RHS Plant Finder that have ‘island’, ‘isle’ or the plurals of these, or even specific islands, in their name. It also lists about six times more than this, the number of ‘island’ plants that were once available but are no longer. So, let’s take a look at some of the best links between our favourite pastime and islands.