Way back in late March, along with my vegetable and sweet pea seeds, I sowed some seeds of Stachys coccinea, an herbaceous perennial native to the USA and Mexico.

Unlike many herbaceous seeds, it was quick to germinate and grew so rapidly that I was able to plant out a group of around five small plants by early June.

The first flowers appeared very shortly afterwards and, as I write, the plants have bulked up and are still flowering, with plenty of buds left to open.

What a winner!

There are around 300 species of Stachys world-wide, including our own native wood betony Stachys officinalis, and the hedge woundwort Stachys sylvatica.

Most of us are familiar with the silvery leaves of lamb's ears, Stachys byzantina (or S.

lanata as it used to be called).

In the gardens at Brockhole we also grow Stachys macrantha 'Superba' a medium-sized perennial with broad, dark green leaves and dense spikes of hooded purple flowers.

All these better-known species have purplish flowers, so you can imagine my pleasure when the new plants produced spikes of delicate orange-red flowers topped with scarlet flower buds waiting to open.

The leaves are a pale, fresh apple-green, slightly hairy, with marked veining.

The two stems that I have brought into the house to help me write this article seem to have a few aphids on the underside of the leaves, but this has not caused any noticeable damage to the plants or to their appearance in the garden.

These are some of the longest flowering perennials I have ever grown, the RHS Encyclopedia says they will flower each year from mid-spring to mid-autumn, pretty good value by most standards I should think.

It also says that S.coccinea is not fully hardy, only able to withstand winter temperatures as low as -5C, so it will be interesting to see how (or if) the plants come through the winter.

Several shrubs, both at Brockhole and in my garden at home, have lost all their leaves during late summer.

These include various species of willow, and all my white and red currant bushes.

There are usually only one or two likely causes of complete defoliation like this, the problem being either caterpillars or a fungal disease such as mildew.

In this case the culprits were almost certainly sawfly caterpillars, which can strip the foliage off a bush almost overnight it seems.

I don't suppose the health of the bushes will be severely affected, though I will be feeding them generously in spring to give them a good start for next year.