The former Gardeners’ World host Alan Titchmarsh has revealed his favourite flower to grow during the winter months with wind, rain and snow set to sweep across the country over the coming weeks.
Writing in the recently released The Gardener’s Almanac, the gardening icon said that as the mercury levels drop closer to freezing, his choice of plant is the Iris unguicularis.
Despite its rather timid looking complexion, the veteran former Gardeners’ World presenter said: “It sits like an unruly rug of linear leaves for most of the year, and then up through that haystack of foliage in December and January push spears of palest amethyst, which open to reveal the most delicate of lavender blue iris flowers that look as though a puff of wind would destroy them.”
After the flower has made its way through the undergrowth and poked above its neighbours, the gardening expert named the perfect place to put it in your home after picking it: “It used to have the more euphonious name of Ivis stylosa until the rather more unwieldy moniker was bestowed upon it.
“Pick the flowers when they are in bud…
