With their distinctive and strange appearance, the Colletias will never be mistaken for other plants.

As you walk towards the Mediterranean Garden passing the bearpit on your right, you will see on your left the Waxyleaf Privet, Ligustrum quihoui Carr. It cannot be missed at this time of year.

For summer, the Gardens’ staff create much admired tender plant displays in the bed to the west of the pavilions and in the bed outside South Lodge on the Thompson Road drive.  See in the latter bed extraordinary Solanum atropurpureum!

Phlomis russeliana or Turkish sage is a hairy perennial with large, ovate, rough-textured grey to mid-green leaves, with a woolly white coating beneath. Stout stems bear whorls of hooded soft yellow flowers 3cms in length from late spring to early autumn. 

This supremely elegant multi-stemmed shrub produces a beautiful display of flowerheads along the tops of its layered branches.

Walk in the woodland garden through the Hamamelis or in the Mediterranean garden and you will see the beautiful intense scarlet flowers of Tulipa sprengeri.

The delicately coloured flowers of this quince appear on bare stems in spring and continue blooming profusely for many weeks well after the leaves emerge. These have a red tinge when young and become shiny green.

This AGM winning camellia is a renowned and cherished hybrid within the camellia world, and its prominence is owed to a range of striking characteristics.

Step behind the noticeboard at the Thompson Road gates to see a lovely large swathe of evergreen Helleborus foetidus (stinking hellebore, or bear’s foot hellebore).

This is a small, deciduous, ornamental cherry tree, with an upright-spreading to rounded habit, and ovate, toothed, green leaves, bronze-tinted when young, orange and yellow in autumn. It blooms in flushes repeatedly from November until March.

As probably the most unusual tree in the Gardens as well as a beautiful one, it is fortuitous that Sequoia sempervirens ‘Cantab’ has such a prominent position at the top of the West Lawn, not far from the Pavilions.

Ilex aquifolium, the common holly, is native to the UK and much of Europe and has been cultivated for hundreds of years, producing a great many varieties. A number of these are most impressive and this is one notable example, Ilex aquifolium ‘Argentea Marginata’.

The scarlet river lily is a really great garden plant, giving very long lasting colour into late autumn.

Luma apiculata is an outstanding shrub with abundant white fragrant flowers, beautiful cinnamon peeling bark and all set within deep evergreen leaves.

Growing in the East Ridge and Furrow area of the Pavilions, here is one of the ginger lilies, its handsome foliage rising along the stems from stout rhizomes.

In the northwestern USA where this elegant shrub originates, it’s known by the common name ‘ocean spray’ because of the masses of exquisite panicles of tiny white flowers. These are a magnet for bees.

The Indian horse chestnut cultivar Aesculus indica ‘Sydney Pearce’ in full bloom at the head of the drive leading from the Thompson Rd entrance is a spectacular sight.

For many years the seed of this unusual annual, which can grow as a short- lived perennial, has lain dormant at the top of the Mixed Borders. Suddenly a large clump of the blue-grey fleshy foliage and drooping blue-green bracts around tubular purple flowers has reappeared.