In praise of……

…. a stalwart little workhorse of a plant, Nemesia ‘Wisley Vanilla’.

I bought 6 of these in early summer to go in a window box & hanging basket,  mainly as a long flowering plant with a colour & shape contrast to Begonia ‘Something or other’. As I couldn’t be bothered to make & maintain the hanging basket 3 plants got shoved in a pot & have sat on the table outside in the garden ever since.

They certainly have flowered their socks off all summer but it took a while for their other major attribute  to penetrate my consciousness, or should that be my nasal passages! I always have pots of lilies on the decking every summer, filling the outside & inside with their very heady & heavenly scent so it was some while before I realised that the vanilla of the Nemesia in fact referred to the perfume rather than the colour. So in between & particularly after the lilies had finished pushing themselves forward like over-dressed strumpets the decking area has been delicately perfumed with the lovely aroma of sweet vanilla.

18 July (note the ‘professional’ design drawing of the proverbial Chelsea bed)

19 July window box performance

2 August (you can just see one of those lary lilies)

15 September

All this with very little in the way of trimming or cutting back. Wisley Vanilla will be back……………..