MANY of the popular plants in our gardens have occurred by chance. The late Ralph Gould, for example, introduced over 100 new flowering plants when working in seed production for a then-Essex-based seed company. Walking row after row of plants being grown in fields for seed and pulling out anything not true to type, called ‘rogueing’, he would spot the occasional mutation. This is the way we got red flowered nigella, commonly called love-in-a-mist and blue in the original cultivar.
His selections could be for plant habit with more compact growth, variegated foliage, different flower colour (called a sport) and double rather than single flower form. Ralph would mark such plants with a tall stake, ready to go back to either carefully lift and pot up to grow on, or wait until there was ripe seed.
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