These Dactylorhizas are very much a feature after most Meconopsis have finished flowering. They multiply up to four fold every year and as they are difficult to obtain they are a very useful plant to offer to visitors to the garden. They transplant pretty well even if in flower. 

I am away for 10 days so there will be a gap in postings.

Carpenteria californica.  A really lovely and reliable shrub, quite happy in fairly alkaline soil, which I have had for many years and has always been been totally hardy with no frost damage ever to lovely dark green foliage. By reputation requires a sheltered site on a south wall - possible different strains have different hardiness. Has fragrance.

A really lovely form of Meconopsis betonicifolia from my daughter's garden in Invergowrie, Tayside. A seedling of mine from my own seed.

Nomocharis are to my mind some of the most beautiful of all bulbous plants. They grow well in the slightly humid conditions that suite Meconopsis on this dry side of  Scotland ( though this year it never stops raining!) and if slugs are kept deterred they increase in size and reliably set seed. Difficult to put a species name to this as it is probably hybrid - but all are beautiful.

This is actually a rather nice deep blue with little in the way of purple. It is a part of the 'horridula' group with spiny buds and foliage. There are lovely silver blues as well as white. It is I suppose now technically M. racemosa but this 'super species' shows great variation. A great advantage of these is that they are really tough plants flowering at 2 (usually) or 3 years old and would grow pretty well even in hot dry sites south of the Scottish border. It is winter dormant with resting buds below the soil surface. Seed from seed exchanges may well of course have some of the less desirable forms with coarse spiny foliage and a flower colour and spots on the leaves of purple. If you have a good colour it will probably breed true. 

Meconopsis napaulensis now produces a wide range of colours and forms with much variation in the foliage. They are clearly somewhat hybrid. This is a very soft cream with a plain green stigma. After a few years as an increasingly large evergreen rosette they eventually throw a tall flowering spike at the back of the border. They will die after this but usually sets lots of seed,