I must confess that until not long ago I had thought of Heuchera as a dull, unexciting plant that never did well in my garden. Then I saw some lovely specimens at West Green House and realised that Heuchera could be a very beautiful plant - given the right conditions. That last phrase is the important bit - "given the right conditions". My Heuchera had always been in a place that was far too damp and shady. In the Autumn of 2015 I dug it up and divided it into 6 little plants, which I kept over Winter in pots in a coldframe. Last Spring I planted them out in a new place, which gets a lot more light, and unsurprisingly the plants are now flourishing. A year on, they are just springing into life once more after their Winter sleep.
Later on the plants will produce tall spikes of small creamy-white flowers, but to be honest those are always insignificant compared to the deeply serrated foliage, which starts off being a bright burgundy sort of red, and gradually darkens to bronze-green as it matures.
Purple is very much the IN color at present, so I want to show you another purple plant. This is Lysimachia ciliata "Firecracker" aka Purple Loosestrife.
I bought this plant a couple of years ago at the RHS plant-shop at Wisley, and I knew when I bought it that it spreads rapidly. Some might call it "invasive". That's OK by me, because I have put it in a corner with some other thugs - Japanese Anemone "September Charm", and Wild Garlic. They are in a place where I can control them easily enough. Each year I rip up a fair few offshoots of the Anemone, but I haven't so far had to restrict the Lysimachia, although it has grown a lot.
In the Summer the Lysimachia will produce a mass of small yellow flowers which contrast most attractively with the dark foliage.
One more non-veg plant for today: Geum "Mrs Bradshaw". I only have one specimen of it and normally it has plain orange-red flowers, like this:
This year however, one of the flowers has a yellow border to its petals:
It will be interesting to see whether the yellow appears on more of the flowers, or on just this one.