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  • Amateur Gardening

    Everybody’s favourites

    Sep 21, 2021 5 minutes

    SEEING a great eiderdown of Sedum spectabile [Hylotelephium spectabile], the ice plant, in my border, a friend explained his liking for it as dating back to childhood days. When the family was about to depart for its summer holiday, his mother always set a vase of these flowers in the front-room window so that the house should appear to be still occupied. They remained alive and fresh until the family’s return.

    Childhood associations of this kind strongly influence our likes and dislikes, though the ice plant has many other good points to make it popular: a pleasing appearance long before and after flowering; a sturdy upright habit; and an attractiveness to bees and butterflies. And in recent years several new varieties of this favourite have been introduced, such as ‘Carmen’, with bright carmine-rose heads of flowers and the glowing carmine-red

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