It is so hard for any gardener to narrow their favourite plants down to just three! We may say that we would have different plants in different seasons, but when put on the spot and asked to narrow it down, it is very interesting to compare which three plants our podcast guests chose.

Chris Wardle is the National Trust for Scotland’s Gardens and Designed Landscape Manager for Aberdeenshire and Angus. Chris moved to Scotland 23 years ago, and the National Trust for Scotland has become his life’s work through all spheres of horticulture as an Assistant Head Gardener, Head Gardener, time at Threave School of Heritage Gardening, plant database work, and Gardens’ Advisor. Chris talks about the exciting developments going on in National Trust gardens, which ones are his favourite to visit, and his attempts to create a tropical jungle feel in his own garden in the north of Scotland. But what are his favourite three plants? When asked as part of our podcast, the Scotland Grows Show, this is what he had to say.

“Trillium is one of my absolute favourites. A beautiful woodland flower, very delicate, it’s a heralder of spring. And if you’ve got the right soil and location, there’s just something so special about it as a plant.

“My second plant would be a grass, I do like grasses. I didn’t really garden with grasses for a long time myself, but I grow them in my garden. And the tall Calamagrostis ‘Karl Forster’ is pretty tough, it will put up with a lot of grief. It expands quite quickly, has seed heads for the winter that you can leave for insects and creatures. There’s something about the way it moves in the wind at a certain time of year, and it goes that really golden colour as it goes into the late summer into the autumn. It’s a fantastic plant!

“My third selection is a plant that I almost challenge anybody to see if they’ve ever heard of it. It’s something called Melanoselinum decipiens, and it is a very distant thug brother of Bishop’s weed, or ground elder, but it is a biennial, sometimes triennial. Basically it has the same leaf as Bishop’s weed, it grows on a woody stem, and it will flower in about the third year if you can grow it from seed. It has enormous leaves that look like ground elder which are about 18 inches to 2ft long on the top of a stem. Then out the top when it flowers is a panicle, so you have to think of something like cow parsely, but about 2ft across, half a sphere of pink flowers, and after that, it sets seeds and dies. So Melanoselinum decipiens.

“You can get the seeds from online seed retailers, and you have to keep them inside, and then plant them out, but when it flowers, wow – it’s an absolute showstopper. Unfortunately, I’ve only managed to grow it once and flower it once, but it’s amazing!”

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Catch up with the rest of Chris’ chat on episode 5 of the Scotland Grows Show.