Plant ideas needed please

welshbookworm

Morning, I hope you can help me please.
My son has a house with a very small garden, basically a square of paving stones with raised beds on 3 sides. I'm hoping to put some plants in them for him which are very low maintenance. But he has asked for plants from Communist or former Communist countries!
My knowledge of gardening is very limited and I wouldn't even know where to find out what plants would fit this criteria, so could anyone help please?
The garden is in West London, but I don't know what the soil/ facing or anything like that, sorry.
Many many thanks

blossomhill_2

Random or what!

Try looking up "Karst gardening" and recreating a karst environment in the raised beds by importing suitable soil/substrate - weather and climate permitting of course - they had very nice examples at Chelsea last couple of years

Davesnave

Well there's Russian vine, Russian tarragon and Russian comfrey; none of which would be the slightest bit suitable.

However, plants are no respectors of political boundaries, and in many cases, their origins are so distant it is hard to know where are 'from.'

This being the case, I'd suggest that you pick a geographical feature like, for example, the Ural mountains, and Google from there.....

One word of caution. When I took my own advice , the first plant I got was Giant Hogweed. :rotfl:

Davesnave

blossomhill wrote: »

Try looking up "Karst gardening"

I did that once, but now I just can't be Karst. :cool:

madjackslam

Does he know that Lenin didn't approve of gardening? http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/119471

China would be a good bet, though. There were a lot of plant-hunting expeditions there that brought back a lot of the plants we grow today - azaleas, bamboos, wisteria - although this is just from memory. Opium poppies?

Similarly, you have got a lot of Eastern Europe to choose from. The Caucusus (in Georgia) were a source of many garden plants, I think.

I think it is probably going to be easier to choose the plants you/he like and then find out where they come from, though.

absfabs

Simple and easy communist scheme: red flowering plants only.

Abs