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Japanese anemone
'Flower of which week?' is the only question with this stalwart of the late-summer border. It has been flowering at Saling since late July and shows little sign of slowing down. From the moment when its strong basal clumps of rough vine-like leaves begins to show in spring to its sturdy rearguard action with scattered flowers in November few plants play a more useful role.
This one, Anemone x hybrida, is perhaps tougher and showier than its parents, A. hupehensis and A. vitifolia, taller and with more petals (or tepals, to be correct). But all of them, pink or white – and there are half a dozen varieties – measure up to the highest standards.
The pink plants we grow all come from one original clump in my parent’s garden on the Kentish North Downs, where they flourished among coarse grasses on solid chalk.
I associate them with harvest time. As a boy I joined the farm workers with their guns as the old reaper and binder went round and round the field, dumping stooks as it went, and isolating a smaller and smaller patch of standing corn in the middle, more and more crowded with terrified rabbits. When they made a run for it, one after another, a fusillade broke out.
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