Bobble dazzlers

PICK up most old gardening books and you’ll either find no mention of sanguisorbas at all or, if they do feature, they’ll be given the epithet ‘weedy’. That all changed when Dutch plants-man Piet Oudolf introduced New Wave naturalistic planting in the 1990s, using plants that fade beautifully into winter.

Sanguisorbas thrive in such schemes because they’re survivors, tough enough and tall enough to stand out from the crowd, yet with an airy translucence and mobility that allows them to shine among taller grasses.

Leading nurserymen took to them immediately, although, in the early 1990s, the choice was limited to three or four. The raspberry-red burred ‘Arnhem’, a July-flowering shoulder-high sanguisorba from