How to choose the best magnolias for your garden, and my Top 100 romantic plants

Plus: the mystery tree, the winner of the book giveaway, a show garden round-up, and some gardening Latin

Mar 16, 2024

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Trees with pink flowers — Magnolias everywhere you look

Hello, and if you’re fed up of the rain and the relentless mud, then you’ve landed in exactly the right place:

I’m going to take you on a journey into sunnier thoughts. Sunny thoughts, romantic thoughts: it’s all here for you in this week’s episode of The Gardening Mind.

We’re going to be looking at the magnolia, that absolute joy-bringer of a tree which at the moment is making everything else seem ok.
We’ve also got the next of My Top 100 Romantic Plants, and it’s a timeless collection that I’ve put together for you. It’ll look perfectly at home in the town and in the country: a classic, with a twist.

Nothing is as quite as big a compliment for a garden as when it’s described as magical. ‘Your garden is magical’ - just imagine hearing those words. There are so many ways of bringing the magic in, and one which we’ve been looking at is the idea of romance.

I’m also going to be revealing the identity of this mystery tree, and how you can come and see it, in real life, with me:

a tree with red berries in snow — The mystery tree.. all to be revealed later in this post

Before we get onto that, welcome to subscribers old and new - it’s been another wonderful week for new subscribers, and I want to give you a great big welcome into the Gardening Mind fold.

As you’ll soon discover, it’s a super-friendly place, and whether you like to quietly observe or join in with the Chats and courses, I think you’ll have found your people. That’s what it feels like to me.

I regularly host Zooms for paid subscribers where I explain to you how to find your way around The Gardening Mind. Here’s the next one for your diaries:
‘Finding your way around The Gardening Mind and how to use Substack’ on Tuesday 26th March at 6pm UK time.
Feel free to come and join us for 30 minutes of my showing you around TGM- it’s an excuse for a get-together!
If you’re here because you’re interested in creating your own garden design, and you’d like to catch up on the Small Garden Design Course, you can find a full-round-up of all the assignments and articles, in chronological order, here. So whether you’re just about to join in for the first time, or if you want to catch up, you can find each relevant piece here to work through at your own pace.
Over on the Chat, we’re also having a potato Chit-along here - do please come and join in this daft conversation - I’d love to know your opinions on chitting1.
And, don’t forget Sunday’s regular Show Us Your Plots on the Chat . Wherever you are in the world, do show us what your garden is looking like - we’d love to see - and we’re not judgemental! All-comers from everywhere are welcome.

“Magnolias are saving us from the collective doom”

So said

Mark Diacono

the other day as we discussed the beauty that is the magnolia. Wherever I look at the moment, the magnolias are splendid. Have you noticed them this year? They’re magnificent. Resplendent. Majestic. Whether goblet-shaped or splatted stars, their solid waxy flowers have an eerily-seductive glow about them; far bulkier than their positively waif-like cherry blossom peers, they stop us in our tracks as they defy gravity, weather and general expectation.

Is this year a particularly good year for the magnolias? It certainly seems like that to me2 - the camellias too have been showier, happier, more in tune with their surroundings than for a long time. I’m convinced that this general feeling that both have somehow just been excellent is due to their colours: the welcome brights pinging to our brains and making us feel better.3

Last week, I stood in a field newly-planted with hundreds of magnolias:

I wish I could share it with you, and perhaps one day, I’ll be able to - there were magnolias of every variety, the passion of a collector, his lifetime’s dream now a reality. The trees are babies still, but each one carried at least one precocious bloom4, fat and heavy on young stems. And in each of these flowers, their semi-precious shades seem to somehow light them up. Pastels and jewels, it was as if someone had strung up a line of carnival lanterns which bobbled through the brown-grey branches.

They are bringers of joy, and they are most definitely saving us from grey:

I need at least one magnolia in my garden. Sometimes, writing these posts sends me off on an online shopping expedition, and today is no exception. My basket currently has three of the following in it, and I’m about to press BUY NOW: