RHS announce People's Choice of Plant of the Decade

Each year the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) hosts a competition amongst Chelsea Flower Show exhibitors to identify their Plant of the Year Competition. This year the RHS brought together 10 Plant of the Year winners from the last decade and asked the public to vote for their favourite. The contenders were:

• Anemone ‘Wild Swan’
• Clematis koreana ‘Amber’
• Digitalis x valinii ‘Illumination Pink’
• Hydrangea macrophylla ’Miss Saori’
• Hydrangea ‘Runaway Bride Snow White’
• Mahonia eurybracteata subsp. Ganipinensis ‘Soft Caress’
• Morus ‘Waisei-kirishima-shikinari’ (syn. Charlotte Russe)
• Sedum takesimense Atlantis (Nonsitnal)
• Streptocarpus ‘Harlequin Blue’
• Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Kilimanjaro Sunrise’

Two winners were announced; the first is decided by RHS President Sir Nicolas Bacon, and the second by the public. Sir Nicolas Bacon chose the houseplant Streptocarpus ‘Harlequin Blue’.

The 'Harlequin Blue' is a compact cultivar with short flower stems to 4.4cm and neat leaves. Flowers are distinctive with yellow lower lobes, which hold their colour well, soft blue upper lobes and very dark purple lines in the throat defining the extent of the two colours.

The People’s Choice Award went to the shrub Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Kilimanjaro Sunrise’. The Kilimanjaro Sunrise is a compact, slow-growing shrub with heart-shaped dark-green, deeply veined leaves. White lace-cap flowers, in profusion, cover the plant in spring and become flushed with an apple-blossom pink during summer. Flowers are followed by deep-red berries which become black; rich autumn foliage colour of orange and red.