Tulip

 

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Monkshood  - Aconitum x bicolor

‘Evil beauty’is how Graham Stuart Thomas characterizes monkshood.  Evil because it is reputed poisonous (certainly its roots are), or because there is something of the Castle of Otranto about its looks ?

This plant, flowering from mid-July but at its baneful best in August, has been in the garden here for so many years that I forget whether it is in fact ‘Spark’s Variety’ or one of Alan Bloom’s Bressingham varieties. It stands bolt upright shoulder high in the front of the border, backed by Phlox ‘White Admiral’ and golden wisps of Stipa gigantea, an architectural eyecatcher that I enjoy both for its doomy flowers and its dark green fingered leaves.

 

 

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