Gardener amazed as flower thrives

Gardener Georgina Duncan certainly got her money's worth when she planted some summer bedding plants last year – as some of them are still flowering.

The mild winter has meant that Ms Duncan's garden is still full of colour as the lobelia plant keeps on flowering.

Ms Duncan, 64, grew the plants from seed. She said: "It is just a summer bedding plant but it has been flowering all winter and is still in flower.

"Gardening is a hobby and it always has been, but I have never known it happen before. I wish everything grew like that," she added.

Ms Duncan, from Madeley, said: "I have not got much of a garden and grow most of it in pots, but there is a wall down one side and I have planted there in the borders.

"I put the lobelia all around there and I took most of it up because it had finished, but this piece just keeps flowering and has just carried on.

"It has even shed seeds now and there are new plants which are three inches high," she said.

"I keep thinking the frost will kill it, but it doesn't. I am quite amazed and show it to everybody who visits and all my friends," she added.

Ms Duncan, who is now retired but used to work as a clothes processor in the rag trade, said the mild winter would have helped but the tough plant was not in a sheltered position.

John Anderson, manager at Meadowdale Nurseries, in Horsehay, Telford, said it was unusual for a lobelia plant to last this long as they were normally killed off by frost in the autumn.

"But we have not had the cold weather we usually have and we have not had the frosts," he added.

"We are seeing other people with bedding plants still around, such as geraniums and bocopa."

The lobelia, or Lobelia erinus, is an annual flower known for the intense blue provided by certain varieties.