The Award of Garden Merit (AGM) issued by the Royal Hoticultural Society (RHS) helps gardeners find reliable, consistent plants that will provide particularly good value in the garden.The award is granted after trials at the RHS’ garden at Wisley in Surrey and/or assessment at specialist collections or discussion at meetings. There is a set list of criteria that plants have to meet to be deemed worthy of the AGM. For more information on the AGM please visit the RHS Website.
Nursery owner, Tim Fuller, has been involved with judging the trials at RHS Wisley since 2008.
Low growing clumps/patches of blue/green leaves with silvery margins. Short stems bearing clusters of apple green flowers which turn rusty-red from spring. 20cm.
AGM Very similar to the well known A. sphaerocephalon but this has light yellow flowers. Well behaved and very pretty mixed with grasses. Drained soil in sun. 60cm.
syn. Stipa arundinacea - New Zealand Wind Grass. Green foliage tinted orange and red in late summer and autumn. Wispy flowers form a cloud above the foliage in late summer. 1m. Not dry.
Popular form of Wood Anemone for its bright white flowers with a ruff of bright white petalloid stamens giving a near double look. Low growing spring flower for shade and ordinary soil. 15cm.
Amazing white spathes with pink candy stripes inside appear slightly before the leaves in late spring. Big rounded trifoliate leaves make an attractive feature later. Good soil that never sits wet in shade. Flowers to 30cm, leaves to 75cm.
One of the best in the recent RHS trials with a compact habit, good purple-red winter foliage and lots of clear pink flowers in spring. Good for a sunny drained position. 40cm.
Very pretty cream margined selection of Box. Grow it as a free standing shrub and don't clip it for the best effect - this also seems to reduce problems increasingly seen with box. 1.2m in 10 years if you're lucky.
Glowing greenish yellow winter stems are the main reason for growing this dogwood. Small clusters of white summer flowers followed by white berries. 2.4m if you don't cut back to a stump every year..
AGM. A neat, tidy, selection of the British native Male Fern. Attractively cristate, crisped fronds to 45cm. Relatively slow growing semi-evergreen for ordinary soil in shade.
A splendid form of the native Male Fern with fronds that beome very finely divided and thread-like as the plant matures. Excellent deep green foliage for a shady corner, semi-evergreen. 90cm.
Miss Willmott's Ghost. Very pretty biennial with rosettes of paddle shaped leaves and strong upright stems of spiny silvery flowers in summer. Drained soil in sun. 60cm.
AGM Very pretty silvery-cream variegated grey leaves and the typical elegant red and purple dangling flowers all summer and into autumn. Hardy in drained soil in a sheltered spot.
From a compact root, flings out long flowering stems, which will scramble into adjacent shrubs, with black-eyed, magenta saucers. Golden leaves ageing to lime green. 1.5m across, 30cm high. Sun or light shade. May/June into autumn.
AGM A mound of large pale blue flowers veined crimson. 45cm. Flowering June-August onwards. Reasonable soil in open or sunny position. Unique colour for a long flowering plant.
(Geranium sanguineum x Geranium procurrens) AGM This Alan Bremner hybrid has intense reddish-pink flowers with bluish-purple shading over mounds of finely cut leaves from June to November. Average soil, sun or shade, 25cm. Brilliant.
A favourite of many gardeners. Evergreen rosettes overwinter become enlarged by flowering summer stems bearing masses of silvery-pink flowers till the frosts. 15cm by 1m spread. Any drained or dry soil in sun.
(Geranium clarkei ‘Kashmir Purple’ x Geranium collinum)
AGM A mound of finely cut leaves covered with large open flowers in light purple from May to November. Unsurpassed for effectiveness. For reasonable soil in sun. 50cm.
A recent introduction with very compact growth and masses of small deep pink flowers in late spring. Not really a groundcover but a spreading patch to 15cm high.
AGM Pure white flowers without the usual pink calyx. Introduced from Mount Olympus by Liverpool Botanic Garden. Shame Vits didn't have this for her "pale garden"! Deciduous.
Large showy magenta flowers, dramatically black-centred, are born on many upward-growing stems in summer. A bushy plant whose large leaves provide brilliant autumn colour. Average soil in sun. 1.2m. Turkey, Armenia.
