Clarkia Crown Double Mix

Tall slender spikes packed with intricate ruffled double flowers that look more like small orchids than a hardy annual has any right to, in soft rose, salmon, mauve and white. The flowers open progressively up the spike, so one stem gives weeks of display.

Almost nobody grows it, which is a shame and also a clue. Clarkia wants cool. It comes from the Pacific North-West, where it flowers as spring turns to summer, and the American name Farewell to Spring is a fair description of its season. In a hot dry British summer it goes over quickly, and on rich, well-fed ground it makes soft leafy growth and flops. Poor thin soil and a cool spring give the best plants, which is the opposite of most people's instincts.

Sown early and given lean ground it is one of the best cut flowers in the hardy annual range, at 60 to 75cm with good vase life and a genuinely old-fashioned character that suits a cottage bouquet. It self-seeds gently. Plant it in fives or sevens; the spikes are slender and a single one disappears.