Can anyone identify these please?

Had a lovely visit to the Barbara Hepworth sculptor garden last Saturday.

any ideas what these two are??

 

The top one looks like echium.
The other I would guess as phormium

 

Thanks pete

 

I don't think the top one is echium, native to Madeira, which is a small perennial like a shrublet usually in bright colours of pink, blue or purple, occasionally white, although that species (vulgare) has panicles of flowers. I could be wrong, though!

I do agree, however, that the second picture is a Phormium tenax (New Zealand flax).

 

Definitely Echium Pininana.
I grew it one year,it was massive.
I have a pic.somewhere...........

 

I recognise second one as phormium, but first one to me looks like two different plants - AMAZING!

what conditions does it like?

 

The top one looks like Bacopa, [Sutera Cordata] growing on something which I don't recognise. I love the second one, at first I thought the flowers belonged to the leaves behind!

 

SNAP Liz!

 

I've used this pic before I know, but its the only one I have of an echium hybrid

 

Pete, those are pretty spectacular- do you grow them?
Perhaps Stingo will tell us if it was a spike.

 

I think I stand corrected .. but I'll look that one up tomorrow and apologise then.

 

I googled it and found this:
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/plantspecies/e/echium/06.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/plantspecies/e/echium/&h=400&w=533&sz=207& hl=en&start=8&tbnid=M4vSY9I246bTeM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=132&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dechium%2Bpininana%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
I am truly amazed! Are they easy to grow? I want one!

Living and learning every day with GC :D

 

Echium pininana(Giant echium) - grow everywhere down here in Cornwall. Self seed like crazy, although mine is more of a seedling at the moment. They grow right on the seafront in Penzance, which suffers gales and occasional floods, so I wouldn't have thought they would be a problem in Wiltshire Liz. They are used quite often here in the council gardens, so I reckon must be easy to grow

 

I think that some folks inland have a few problems overwintering them outside Windy. They can be prone to frost damage, especially on heavy soils. It seems that the past winter saw off quite a few plants that were growing away from the coasts, so a sunny, sheltered site and sharply drained soil are more or less obligatory for their success.

They do very well here, as do the hybrids, straight E. wildpretii and the shrubby fastuosum. All of them put on a good show earlier and several fastuosum are still showing lots of colour. I must say I prefer the stronger colours of wildpretii and its denser flowering habit. It's not as massively tall as pininana, but as they say, size isn't everything.

Even though I'm just a few hundred yards from the beach along the coast from Torquay, the sticky humidity in my walled garden causes Echium pininana to collapse in summer so I can't grow it. That's no big deal for reasons given above, but wildpretii keels over as well. No problems during winter, but by midsummer the leaves sag and within days the plants die.

Fastuosum on the other hand, just grows as if dimented. I had to rip out a seedling that grew to 5 feet high and just under 8 feet across in 18 months. It's much less hardy than the tall forms and seem a good deal more tolerant of water and humidity. However, when it tumbles over onto the patio it's no fun brushing past those bristly leaves when you're wearing shorts!

I content myself with other Atlantic island beauties such as Isoplexus instead. Now they do like the humidity and happily cope with quite dense shade as well.

 

Sorry, Pete! You learn something every day ... especially on GC. :D