Slug Proof Plant - Try Eryngium Yuccifolium or anything hairy or prickly.
Autumn..
This week I have been enjoying the late summer sun. Watching as the low sun moves around the garden, casting long shadows over the grass. I have been dividing perennials and renovating the borders trying to keep them looking fresh for next year and trying out new planting combinations. I have placed a small Eryngium yuccifolium next to a beautiful soft pink, scented David Austin rose called ‘Heritage’, this is just behind some soft ‘lambs ears’ and a silver grass( Could be miscanthus sinensis 'Silberfeder'), which has self seeded. This, like most of my gardening was a lucky guess. I had been bobbing around the front of the border carrying the Eryngium root ball and squinting, trying to work out where to squeeze it in when I put it down to rest on the grass in front of the rose. Not something I would normally think of but the combination of the spiky foliage and the soft ‘lambs ears’ and the green blue foliage with pink and silver works.
Eryngium yuccifolium grows to around 1.5m and provides a great architectural contrast to the ‘soft’ planting in the borders. It is also known as
‘Rattlesnake Master’ (cue scary music) because the root used to be used by the Native American Indians to cure rattlesnake bites. It’s native to the tall grass prairies of central and eastern North America. These prairies also contained grasses such as Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), and Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and Switch grass (Panicum virgatum), which average between 5 and 6 feet. So tall, that a native Red Indian could travel through them on horseback almost unseen. (So the story goes).
