October 2019
Spanish Flags
These days inspiration can come from many sources: visits to gardens, social media and television, and on this occasion it was from the latter. In March an episode of the BBC’s ‘Gardener’s World’ focussed on many annual climbing plants at Parham House in Pulborough, West Sussex, and this segment of the show gave us the inspiration to create tripods of Ipomoea lobata. Commonly known as ‘Spanish Flag, this quick growing annual with its strong, reddish twining stems can reach up to 12ft, a perfect plant to climb up tripods made from tall hazel canes. On one side of each of the stems are racemes of tubular flowers from flame red at the tip, fading through to cream that creates the illusion of many hundreds of fluttering Spanish flags.