Repost 22 July 2007: The Jurassic Period Comes To West London

I like to look back on photos of how bare and minimalist my garden used to be before all the plants. I expect Hubster longs for the days when he could hang out the washing without being spiked, spored, soaked or stained by something in the garden...

This afternoon Hubster and I went shopping for some new plant pots, as the planter in which I put the artichoke my coworker gave me has no holes in the bottom, and the poor thing was waterlogged (but looking very good for it!). Of course, I'm incapable of leaving a garden centre without a plant for the garden, and today's new "leaf baby" was a Hart's Tongue fern, Asplenium scolopendrium:


So here are a few more of my darlings. First up, the Dicksonia antarctica, uneaten by the squirrels in months:


Here's the little juniper shrub I bought way back in January - Juniperus squamata "Blue Star":

My other ferns - Adiantum fragrans, the Maidenhair fern:


Dryopteris erythrosora whose fronds are red when young:


The common polypody, Polypodium vulgare, with bright orange spores under each frond:


And Polystichum tsussimense, a lovely little compact fern:


I have a Canary Island date palm, Phoenix canariensis, which has speared Hubster in his more delicate regions on many an occasion:


And of course my beautiful Wollemia nobilis:


Of course, for various reasons I've acquired a few palaeontologically incorrect angiosperms - Rosemarinus officinalis (which tastes great pushed into deep incisions on a joint of lamb...), two alpines Hypericum polyphyllum and Phlox subulata, and the little artichoke that could, Cynara scolymus:


But I want more...