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This is part two of an interview which began last week.
Graham: We have a highly respected national organisation called Thrive (until recently known as Horticultural Therapy) which runs gardens where anyone who needs special help with gardening can come for courses and advice and where demonstration gardens and plantings show how to organise gardens to make gardening easier and more fulfilling for the elderly and disabled. Thrive is a charity which receives its funds from private donations, special events and research grants. They also assess tools and techniques and pass on this information and much more through their regular newsletters. The group that I have especially supported is part of the Hardy Plant Society in Britain. The Society has a number of special interest groups, mainly focusing on specific groups of plants, but there is also the Correspondents Group. This is intended for people who are not sufficiently mobile to attend meeting and garden visits and so who keep in touch an exchange information through their own newsletter. Diana: That gives me an idea, Graham. Just maybe I could start a quarterly newsletter on gardening for the disabled. I wonder if there would be a market for this. Thank you for triggering that idea! Diana: If you had to recommend your favorite annuals, what would the top five be? Are these easy to grow without requiring tedious care? Graham: This is very difficult! 1. At the top of my list must be the morning glory (Ipomoea) 'Heavenly Blue'. Although this can be tricky to get started in colder areas its silky soft blue trumpets are so wonderful that it's worth a little effort. It covers fences, scrambles into shrubs and flowers for months. Heavenly Blue is available from Park Seed. 2. I like busy lizzies (Impatiens) because they're so adaptable. They thrive in most climates, in sun or shade, they're easy to grow and they come in an ever increasing range of colours and patterns. One of the prettiest and most recent is 'Mosaic', a mixture of just three colours (lilac, rose pink and violet) with the flowers prettily speckled in white. They're especially pretty in a container. This is available from Stokes. 3. Sweet peas are classic traditional British annuals and their colours and scents are indispensable, I grow them every year. The old fashioned ones from the 1800s have smaller flowers then the modern varieties but a much more powerful and sweet scent. Sweet peas are available from Florabunda Seeds and many other catalogs..
The copyright of the article Graham Rice Interview, Continued in Gardening Techniques is owned by Diana Pederson. Permission to republish Graham Rice Interview, Continued in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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