Alyssum Royal Carpet

The purple counterpart to 'Carpet of Snow', and for most cottage schemes the more useful of the two. A dense mat 10 to 15cm high, smothered in tiny violet-purple flowers from late spring to autumn, with the same honey scent that seems far too big for the size of the flower.

What it does that the white cannot is act as a foil. A band of saturated violet at ground level makes warm colours above it sing, so it earns its place at the front of a border planted with calendula, nasturtium or anything in the orange and gold range. On its own it can read a little flat, particularly at a distance.

Like the white it goes tired and brown in the middle during a hot dry spell around midsummer. Shear it back by half and it comes again within a few weeks. Keep it lean and sunny; rich ground gives you leaf instead of flower, and the purple pales in soft growth. It self-seeds gently, though seedlings from a coloured strain tend to drift back towards paler mauve rather than coming true.