My top 3 "desert Island" plants....

A fun challenge was set by Shirley of Shirls Gardenwatch in Scotland to consider the three plants you'd take to a Desert Island with you - bearing in mind that plants providing food already existed! This made the choice marginally easier, but was actually incredibly difficult - of course I spent ages trying to think of plants that would give the longest season of flowering or ones that would give interest during the winter months and in the end came up with these three....

I had to have a rose and since being in France one of my favorites - 2 of which we inherited in our garden is Rosa "Madame Alfred Carriere" - it's one of the most prolific flowering rambling roses that I've come across that carries on flowering from early summer right up till late autumn. It has creamy/white blooms with hints of pink and smells absolutely gorgeous!

My next choice is the Oriental Poppy - these don't have such a long flowering period but are stunning and once the leaves have died back, new ones are formed which stay all winter until the new blooms arrive - having quite a good collection of these in my garden I really couldn't imagine a garden without them.... great for pollinating insects too!

My final choice is Camelia sasanqua "Evangelica" which is probably one of the latest additions to our garden - it flowers from late autumn and has only just stopped - it has the most amazing deep pink flowers with a mass of yellow stamens in the middle and gives a real splash of brightness in the garden at a time when very little else is out.

Shirley never mentioned we couldn't take seeds with us... might just pop in the odd sweet pea seed or maybe a few sunflower seeds too! ;-)