The RHS Award Of Garden Merit - Chilean Potato Tree

The end of April has seen our Chilean Potato Tree (or Solanum Crispin 'Glasnevin') come back into flower. This is a stunning plant, which maintains its green all year round, and in April and May has hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny purple and yellow blooms on it. It really is a simple way to get a real splash of vibrant colour in our garden. It's such a simple plant to maintain that it has been awarded the RHS Award Of Garden Merit. According to the RHS the AGM is intended to be of practical value to the home gardener. It is awarded therefore only to plants that meet the following criteria:

• It must be of outstanding excellence for ordinary garden decoration or use.
• It must be readily available
• It must be of good constitution
• It must not require highly specialist growing conditions or care and
• It must not be particularly susceptible to any pest or disease

Reading between the lines I believe that this description could be replaced by 'Even an Idiot should not be able to kill it'!

The Chilean Potato Tree that runs along our back fence has survived quite a deal since we moved in. It survived being ripped off the fence and crudely replaced by the folks who replaced the fence without giving us notice, followed by a lot of work, by us to replace it correctly:

It has come back stronger than ever despite several of the main plant stems being snapped in half.

It basically grows like a weed and grows excessively come Spring and Summer. I gave it its first well needed trim this past weekend, to ensure it doesn't sprawl over into the next door garden. I am sure I will be back clambering up the ladder and risking life and limb to trim it again in about a months time! Although an idiot might not be able to kill it, it certainly has the ability to kill an idiot who falls off a ladder trimming it! ;-)

And the trimmed plant, it doesn't take long to look chaotic again ;-)

A really nice plant though if you are prepared to spend the time trimming back in the warmer months!

Have fun.

Cheers

m

P.S. Another snap from last year,