Botanically related to the Ixias, since they both belong to the iris family, are the Sparaxis. The best known is the Wand Flower, S. pulcherrimum, now Dierama pulcherrimum, a graceful but rather untidy thing for which I know I ought to, but cannot, entertain a deep affection.

Loveliest of all perhaps is Ixia viridiflora, sea-green with a black eye, a treasure for connoisseurs. When I was recently in Cape Town I thought my chance had come to buy dozens of its bulbs, but could get only a dozen. #gardening

Ixias are also so graceful somewhat resembling freesias, on their airy stems and so pretty in their range of odd colourings: rose-pink, straw, yellow, white, coppery and so good for picking that a couple of dozen at least ought to be in every #garden. #gardening

On the whole I have found Ixias reasonably reliable even in an ordinary bed. It is true that they diminish instead of increasing with the years, but they are so cheap that a dozen can be added each year to replenish the stock. #gardening

—at the foot of a south wall, in just such a place as you would set Iris unguicularis starved and baked to flower best. A raised bed would be ideal for ixias where you could probably keep them going for years and years. #gardening

Ixias, or corn lilies, are natives of South Africa and thus demand a well drained gritty soil in the warmest place we can provide— #gardening

14 July’57 I know I have written about Ixias before, but a reminder may come usefully, now that the autumn catalogues are getting smeared with jam and honey on the breakfast table every morning. #gardening

You can save and ripen your own seed by cutting a spray or two and laying it out on sheets of paper in a sunny place. Do this before it has the chance to become blackened and sodden by autumnal rains. #gardening

An additional attraction is that the flowering spike will last for at least a year indoors if you cut it off in autumn before the rain has come to sodden it. #gardening

6 seeds will give 6 plants, and 6 plants will be enough to scent the garden, especially if planted under windows. An additional attraction is that the flowering spike will last for at least a year indoors if you cut it off in autumn. #gardening

A native of Australia incense plant is not hardy here and must be treated as a half-hardy biennial down under glass in early summer and planted out in the Kate half of May or the beginning of June. #gardening

Incense plant makes its influence felt in more subtle ways than by a great splash of colour. It steals across the air as potently and persuasively as the sweet briar on a damp evening. I stick it into odd corners where people pass or sit on benches and pause for a moment . . .

It is neither showy nor conspicuous and nothing but the scent would lead you to it among its more garish companions such as the delphiniums; yet the incense plant is graceful in its growth and well deserves it adjective elegans [Humea elegans]. #gardening

Eventually they track it down to a 6-8' tall plant, with large pointed dark green leaves, and a branching spike of feathery cedarwood-coloured flowers. #gardening

One might imagine oneself in an Italian cathedral instead of an English #garden. They are quite right, for its other name is the Incense Plant. #gardening

9 July ‘50 A plant which I find always arouses a good deal of interest in the summer here is Humea elegans [Calomeria amaranthoides]. Visitors walk round sniffing and saying: 'What is that curious scent of incense?' #gardening

The old Madame Alfred Carrière is likewise in full flower. Smaller than Paul’s rose with no pretensions to a marmoreal shape, Madame Alfred, white flushed with shell-pink, has the advantage of a sweet true rose scent. #gardening

The full-grown [Paul’s Lemon Pillar] flower is scarcely less beautiful; and when the first explosion of bloom is over, a carpet of thick white petals covers the ground, so dense as to look as though it had been deliberately laid. #gardening

And its great merit lies not only in the vigour of its growth and wealth of flowering, but also in the perfection of its form. The shapeliness of each [Paul’s Lemon Pillar] bud has a sculptural quality which suggests curled shavings of marble. #gardening

Another favourite white rose of mine is Paul's Lemon Pillar. It should not be called white. A painter might see it as greenish, suffused with sulphur-yellow. #gardening

Madame Plantier has to be tied up round her tree in long strands otherwise she would make only a big straggly bush. #gardening

Queen Victoria is dead, but Madame Plantier is still very much alive. I go out to look at her in the moonlight: she gleams, a pear-shaped ghost, contriving to look both matronly and virginal. #gardening

Madame Plantier and the dates back, in fact, to 1835 just two years before Queen Victoria came to the throne; so she and the Queen may be said to have grown up together towards the crinolines of their maturity. #gardening

Madame Plantier is now 15 feet high with a girth of 15 yards, tapering toward the top like the waist of a Victorian beauty and pouring down in a vast crinoline stitched all over with its white, sweet-scented cluster of flowers. #gardening

There is one called Madame Plantier which we planted at the foot of an old worthless apple tree, vaguely hoping that it might cover a few feet of trunk. #gardening

July ‘51 I am astonished and even alarmed by the growth which certain roses will make in the course of a few years. #gardening

Later on there will be white Japanese anemones and white dahlias; but I do not like to think of later on. It is bad enough to have turned over into July, with a freshness of another May and June gone forever. #gardening

Down the central path goes an avenue of white climbing roses straggling up old almond trees. #gardening

The white shrubby Hydrangea grandiflora; white Cistus; white Tree Peonies #gardening

There is a group of the giant Arabian thistle, pure silver, 8ft. high; two little sea buckthorns; and the grey-leaved Pyrus salicifolia sheltering the grey leaden statue of a Vestal Virgin. #gardening