As you may have read we already have one dragon in Spring Gardens..
Here she is sitting behind the hydrangeas, which incidentally are looking superb this year, the blue varieties especially!
So to carry on with the theme of dragons, I planted some Dragon Arums (Dracunculus vulgaris). They prefer moist soil, so the best place to try them was in Spring Gardens. If some of you haven't heard of these they are quite striking, and a bit stinky too!
The foliage is very attractive with speckled/marbled leaves, but the surprise is the flower (bract) which can grow up to 2m high. Without getting technical this is one of nature's oddities as it is pollinated by flies not bees. When ready for pollination the plant produces a smell like rotten meat to attract the flies!
Apparently it was used to preserve cheese by wrapping the leaves round it!!
