PLANT USE AND FLOWER SHAPE GALLERY PAGES

This Gallery compares the use and flower shape of plants in this website combined with those already compared in
Bedding, Bulb, Evergreen Perennial, Herbaceous Perennial and Roses pages as linked to in the table at the end of this page.
 

PLANTS FLOWER SHAPE GALLERY PAGES

Number of Flower Petals

Petal-less

1

2

3

4

5

Above 5

Flower Shape - Simple

Stars with Single Flowers

Bowls

Cups and Saucers

Globes

Goblets and Chalices

Trumpets

Funnels

Rose Petal Count from Rose Use Gallery
 

Single:
1-7 Petals

Semi-Double:
8-15 Petals
 

Flower Shape - Simple

Bells

Thimbles

Urns

Salver-form

Double:
Page 1,
Page 2
16-25 Petals

Full:
26-40 Petals

Very Full:
40+ Petals

Flower Shape - Elabor-ated

Tubes, Lips and Straps

Slippers, Spurs and Lockets

Hats, Hoods and Helmets

Stan-dards, Wings and Keels

Discs and Florets

Pin-Cushions

Tufts and Petal-less Cluster

Rose Bloom Shape from Rose Use Gallery

High-Centred,

Cupped,
 

Flower Shape - Elabor-ated

Cushion

Umbel

Buttons with Double Flowers

Pompoms

Stars with Semi-Double Flowers

Flat,

Globular,
 

Pompon,

Rosette

Natural Arrange-ments

Bunches, Posies and Sprays (Group)

Columns, Spikes and Spires

Whorls, Tiers and Cande-labra

Plumes and Tails

Chains and Tassels

Clouds, Garlands and Cascades

Sphere, Dome (Clusters), Drumstick and Plate

Plant Use

BEDDING OUT and Bedding Out of Roses

BEDDING for Filling In

BEDDING for Screening

BEDDING for Pots and Troughs

BEDDING in Window Boxes

BEDDING in Hanging Baskets

BEDDING Foliage

BEDDING
Spring

Summer

Winter

Foliage Only

Other Than Green Foliage
 

Trees in Lawn

Trees in Small Gardens
 

Wildflower Garden

Attract Bird Attract Butterfly 1, 2
 

Climber on House Wall

Climber not on House Wall

Climber in Tree

Rabbit-Resistant

Wood-land

Pollution Barrier

Part Shade

Full Shade

Single Flower provides Pollen for Bees
1, 2, 3

Ground-Cover
<60cm
60-180cm
>180cm

Hedge

Wind-swept

Covering Banks

Patio Pot

Edging Borders

Back of Border

Poisonous

Adjacent to Water

Bog Garden

Tolerant of Poor Soil

Winter-Flowering
 

Fragrant

Not Fragrant

Exhibition

Standard Plant is 'Ball on Stick'

Upright Branches or Sword-shaped leaves

Plant to Prevent Entry to Human or Animal

Tolerant of Coastal Con-ditions

Tolerant on North-facing Wall

Cut Flower

Potted Veg Outdoors

Potted Veg Indoors
 

Thornless

Raised Bed Outdoors Veg
 

Grow in Alkaline Soil A-F, G-L, M-R, S-Z

Grow in Acidic Soil

Grow in Any Soil

Grow in Rock Garden

Grow Bulbs Indoors

These are the Flower Colours for the UK Native Wildflowers:-

Wild Flower
with its
flower colour page,
space,
Site Map page in its flower colour
NOTE Gallery
...Blue Note
...Brown Note
...Cream Note
...Green Note
...Mauve Note
...Multi-Cols Note
...Orange Note
...Pink A-G Note
...Pink H-Z Note
...Purple Note
...Red Note
...White A-D Note
...White E-P Note
...White Q-Z Note
...Yellow A-G Note
...Yellow H-Z Note
...Shrub/Tree Note

followed by some of the Other Flower Colour Wheels:-

2. Bulb Colour Wheel

7 Flower Colours per Month in Colour Wheel below in
BULB, CORM, RHIZOME and TUBER GALLERY.

Click on Black or White box in Colour of Month.

BULB, CORM, RHIZOME AND TUBER INDEX - There are over 700 bulbs in the bulb galleries. The respective flower thumbnail, months of flowering, height and width, foliage thumbnail, form thumbnail use and comments are in the relevant index page below:-
(o): A
(o): B
(o): C
(o): D
(o): E
(o): F
(o): G
(o): H
(o): I
....: J
....: K
(o): L
(o): M
(o): N
(o): O
(o): P
....: Q
....: R
(o): S
(o): T
....: U
(o): V
....: W
(o): XYZ

3. Bee-pollinated plants in Colour Wheel of 12 Flower Colours Per Month

Besides the plants in the
British Floral Sources of importance to Honey Bees
and
Bee Pollinated Plants for Hay Fever Sufferers
the following 3 sets of Bee-pollinated plants are suitable for Hay-fever Sufferers; except for the 2 grasses :-

• This Bee-pollinated Bloom in Month gallery compares 13 flower colour photos per month for many plants from the other Galleries, by clicking on the 1 in the relevant Flower per month Colour in the Colour Wheel down on the right,
• the Bee-pollinated Index Gallery provides the tabular index of another 265 plants with the relevant colour in that respective month:-
  • 51 ANNUALS
  • 2 ANNUAL - VEGETABLE
  • 4 AQUATIC PLANTS
  • 11 BIENNIALS
  • 21 BULBS, CORMS, OR RHIZOMES
  • 4 CLIMBERS
  • 31 DECIDUOUS SHRUBS
  • 26 DECIDUOUS TREES
  • 10 EVERGREEN PERENNIALS
  • 22 EVERGREEN SHRUBS
  • 2 EVERGREEN TREES
  • 2 GRASSES which cause hayfever
  • 4 SEMI-EVERGREEN SHRUBS
  • 66 HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS
  • 9 PERENNIAL HERBS
    followed by
• Click on these extra bee-pollinated plant names:-
  • ACER (Deciduous/Evergreen Shrub/Tree) in March-April
    CHAENOMELES SPECIOSA (Herbaceous Perennial) in March-May
    CROCUS (Bulb) in September-April
    CYDONIA OBLONGA (Deciduous Shrub) in April-June
    DAFFODIL (Bulb) in December-May
    DAHLIA (Bulb) in June-November
    DUTCH HYACINTH (Bulb) in March-April
    HEATHERS (Evergreen Shrub) in every month
    HEDERA HELIX (Evergreen Climber) in September-November as last major source of nectar and pollen in the year
    HELIANTHEMUM (Deciduous Shrub) in June-August - Pollen only collected when the flowers open during sunny weather
    HELENIUM (Herbaceous Perennial) in June-October
    HELLEBORUS (Herbaceous Perennial) in January-March
    HEUCHERA (Evergreen Perennial) in May-September
    HIBISCUS (Deciduous Shrub) in August-September
    ILEX (Evergreen Tree) in May-June
    LAVANDULA (Annual, Herbaceous Perennial or Shrub) in June-July
    LAVATERA (Annual, Biennial, or Herbaceous Perennial) in May-August
    LEPTOSIPHON (Annual) in June-August
    MAGNOLIA GRANDIFLORA (Evergreen Tree) in August-September
    MALVA SYLVESTRIS (Biennial) in June-September
    MENTHA (Herb) in July-August
    NEMOPHILA (Annual) in April-June
    NIGELLA (Annual) in July-September
    PHILADELPHUS species only with single flowers (Shrub) in June
    POLEMONIUM (Herbaceous Perennial) in April-June
    PRUNUS CERASIFERA (Deciduous Tree) in February-March
    PRUNUS LAUROCERASUS (Evergreen Shrub) in April-June
    PYRACANTHA COCCINEA (Evergreen Shrub) in May-June
    ROSES (Deciduous Shrub/Climber) in June-October
    RUBUS IDAEUS (Raspberry) (Soft Fruit) in May-June
    SALVIA SUPERBA (Herbaceous Perennial) in June-September - no bee garden should be without this plant - for those plants.

Inner circle of Grey is 12 months of Unusual or Multi-Coloured Flower Colour

4. Rock Garden (Alpines) suitable for Small Gardens in 53 Colours (Peter Reason of boundarynursery.co.uk sells plants to use in a small raised alpine bed)

FLOWERING IN MONTH
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

5. Bloom in Month with 12 Flower Colours per Month

6. Climbers Bloom per Month with 7 Flower Colours per Month

7. Evergreen Perennials Bloom per Month with 7 Flower Colours per Month

8. Herbaceous Perennials Bloom per Month with 7 Flower Colours per Month

7 Flower Colours - Blue, White, Yellow, Green for Unusual Colour with Red, Pink and Purple on same page - per Month in Colour Wheel below in the HERBACEOUS PERENNIAL Gallery.

Click on Black or White box in Colour of Month.

9. Herbaceous Perennials Bloom per Month with 7 Flower Colours per Month for the Herbaceous Perennials at RHS Wisley described in the MIXED BORDER DESIGN Topic.

7 Flower Colours - Blue, White, Yellow, Green for Unusual, Red, Orange and Pink per Month in Colour Wheel below in the MIXED BORDER DESIGN Topic.

Click on Black or White box in Colour of Month.

Plant Care

This is a photo of a Ryegrass plant, that was growing in Type I MOT Roadstone on flat ground in a private garden. You will note that it has a great deal of fibrous root - apparently in American Baseball Stadiums each grass plant has over 100 miles of root.

.

That root in cooperation with worms, bacteria etc takes in food, which is brought down from the surface by water (usually rain, but can be by irrigation) either in tunnels created by the worms, moles, etc or when the ground cracks open in the summer when the clay soil dries up and shrinks - clay soil can absorb 40% of its own volume before it turns from a solid to a liquid. That root also breathes in oxygen then expels carbon dioxide (Click on Carbon Cycle) and nitrogen (Click on Nitrogen Cycle) ALL THE TIME.

If you buy Sharp-Washed-Sand from a Builder's Merchant and put that into a clean pot round a plant, then using NPK fertilisers the roots of that plant can absorb that food dissolved in water. Once you stop supplying that water and food, that plant will die (it is like saying that for you to survive, that you need a lb of glucose each day, so I sit you down outside and put 365 lbs of glucose round your feet. It rains and within 6 weeks that glucose has either been eaten by you or dissolved in the rain and washed down into the ground below your feet. Then you complain to me that you are hungry).

To make that Sharp-Washed-Sand into soil, you need dead plant material, shit from animals or dead animals, bacteria, worms that can be eaten by the animal, bacteria and worms to bind those sand particles together with clay and organic matter (Click on Soil Structure). That soil can then hold onto the some of the rain (Click on How does Water act in the Soil) with food for the animal/plant in it, before the excess rain drains through below the top soil to the sub-soil and the food in it is then lost to the plants above it. The easiest method of supplying the dead plant material is to collect your potato peelings, tea bags, coffee grounds in a bucket under the sink before putting them on the ground surface round a plant. Then, mow the lawn and put 1cm or 0.5 inch depth of grass mowings on top to complete the organic mulch, provide water from the grass and nitrogen from it to compost the peelings below. The worms having made tunnels in the soil may also eat the peelings. When it rains the water can absorb nutrients from that mulch and take it down using those tunnels. WHEN THOSE TUNNELS ARE FULL OF WATER AND A CLOD-HOPPING HUMAN WALKS ON IT, THEN IT COLLAPSES AND NO LONGER FUNCTIONS. If it rains heavily, allow the ground to recover for a couple of days before walking on it.

You can then see that a Sandy Soil is much easier for the roots of a plant to get into, but when it rains it dries up quickly and then the food in it gets washed through it very quickly (Click on How are Chemicals stored and released from Soil?). It is also easier for the gases to get in and out.

A clay soil is more difficult for plants, since when it rains the tunnels fill up with water and thus could drown the roots. Put sand round its roots up to the surface of the soil and this will combine with the clay to stop the roots from being drowned or without Nitrogen and Carbon gas exchange. If your lawn is soggy when it rains, then cut the lawn short when it is dry and apply 25Kg of sand over a 5 metre x 5 metre area once a month for 3 months during May-September and it will change the soil structure to lessen that.

A mixture of Clay and Soil is best (Click on Soil Formation - What is Soil Texture?).

I saw a yew tree that had been planted in a churchyard in 2000 as a 2 foot high tree. In 2009 it had reached 7 feet high and 3 feet across. Why had it not grown?

It was planted on a 30 degree slope in clay/sand soil with grass growing round its base. It had the following 3 reasons for failure to grow:-

• When it rained, the water would either be taken up by the roots of the grass (Click on the roots of just 1 plant in the photo above) or run off down the slope.
• The grass would take all the nutrients out the top soil leaving none to be washed down to the roots of the yew tree.
• The grass would be using all the oxygen that came down the tunnels, leaving none for the yew tree

So, I carefully removed the grass and its roots from around its base out to the tips of the tree branches and mulched that bare ground with shrub prunings / grass mowings to a 4 inch depth. A year later it was growing quite well with new leaves and an increase of density of branches.

In Maderia I saw a mature olive tree - which had been transplanted from the nursery to a roof garden - a year after it was planted. It was on a mound with brazilian grass growing round its base. It was dying from dehydration even though it was irrigated every other day - the grass was growing well.

An organic mulch about 4 inches deep on weeded soil makes garden maintenance very easy. Once a week you walk round the garden and using a swoe (a hoe has 2 arms to the horizontal blade, a swoe only has 1 so that you can stand on the lawn and be able to hoe behind the plant in front of you) hoe through the weed root in the top of the mulch and remove the uprooted weed. I find that Spent Mushroom Compost is light, easy to lay, easy to hoe and lasts a relatively long time. You may lose about 50% each year. If you do not apply any mulch and you do have groundcover plants covering all the soil, then you will enjoy permanent weeding chores like the painters on the Forth Bridge last century - you come to the other side and have to start again immediately. When you prune your shrubs/trees/hedges then put the prunings on your uncut lawn. When you deadhead your bulbs or remove perennials, shake off the earth from the roots and place on the uncut lawn. Using a rotary mower cut your lawn and it will cut the grass and your prunings/perennials into small bits which you then mulch your flower beds/hedges with. In the autumn, set your mower to its highest cut and transfer the autumn fallen leaves onto the lawn before mowing them and mulching as before. Continue mowing once a week untill all fallen leaves have been removed.

If your garden is on a steep slope - I maintained one that had half-circle beds with lawn paths round them - the diameter of the circle was usually level and the half-circumference went down the slope. The ground had flint and chalk in it and the plants in it were usually the inverted cone shape. When it rained, the stones would be washed off onto the lawn paths and damage my mowing machine. Providing any mulch applied to those beds is covered with grass mowings, then that problem - of the stones being washed off by any rain however hard onto the paths - is stopped.

Roots of plants that you put into your garden do extend and grow, but the existing roots do not move by themselves to better places. You have to untangle them and spread them out yourself. I planted a blue cedar in my front garden and 9 years later it died. When I took it out, I found that the roots which had been going round the inside of the pot before I planted it had expanded sideways to fill the complete space between them as if they were still in the pot. There were very few roots which had grown away from this rootball and so the plant died due to dehydration, lack of food and lack of gas exchange in the ground.

A minor point that people forget is that you only live because you can breath oxygen, and plants provide it. So please look after the plant so that they have food, water and air (best soil has at least 30% air in it) on a regular basis, just like you do for your children.

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The following photos show that nature can create conditions in and on a bed of Type I Roadstone - laid on a geotextile to prevent the soil under it from mixing with it - to support plants and then grow grass.

This is the same garden as the one showing the roots of a Ryegrass plant above. The Roadstone had been laid to create a more level garden and then only used with a normal washing line to dry washing. The weeds were growing quite tall in the area where the dead leaves from the Leylandii Hedge growing alongside the boundary fence in the next door garden were depositing themselves.

In order to reduce the length of time maintaining this garden, reduce the height of growing vegetation and since some grass had already started to grow, it was decided to sow grass seed and then let nature take its course without an irrigation system.

So the first area was cleared, cheap grass seed sown and some sand was scattered over the seed to level the surface, prevent the birds from eating the seed and produce an easier area for the grass roots.

The juvenile grass appeared after a couple of weeks.

The weeds grow in the roadstone covering this garden and have been used as a mulch on the raised bed on the left. A self-sown seedling of an oak tree has been growing in this raised bed and its only maintenance consists of providing a mulch of the weeds removed from this garden round its base. Since this minimal maintenance program was started, the sapling has grown 4 feet in 2 years.

The paver in the middle covers the hole for the supporting tube of the washing line.

These show the new grass growing in the roadstone with sand on top and in the roadstone without sand on the top.

So, if you want a new drive that will provide you with:-

• oxygen for you to breathe,
• absorb the rainfall that falls on it rather than that rain going into the public road and maybe causing flooding further down the road,
• solve the problem of overhanging trees dropping their leaves on your ground - in the autumn set your mower to its highest setting and once a fortnight mow the drive, then use the mown grass/leaves as a mulch on your flower beds, vegetable beds and hedges,
• re-use an area that was boggy or unused for a hardstanding for cars, caravans or boats.

then remember to use a geotextile under 4 inch depth (10cms) for sand or chalk soil or 8 inch depth for clay soil (Click on Case 3 which details the foundation depth required) to prevent the soil and stone mixing and the roots of trees or shrubs from growing in it. Then, sow your grass seed before blinding it with a thin layer of sharp-washed sand to level it and stop the birds from eating that seed. Then, from March to December mow it after each 3 week period to 1 inch (2.5cms) height to keep it low.

According to the Civil Service Motoring Association Magazine of September 2012, "there are 7,000,000 UK gardens that have been paved over to make space for parking, says the RAC Foundation. The increase in vehicle numbers, and limit on public parking spaces, means that, of the 80 per cent of dwellings built with a front garden, two-thirds are now paved over for cars." Most of the current population in the UK breathe, and that means that most of the current population do not have the 25 x 25 feet of lawn necessary for that lawn to produce their required Oxygen for the year for them to breathe as well as the incredible amount of oxygen used by car engines. This means that the human population is currently asphyxiating itself, instead of growing grass to park their cars on.