Poppy Californian Thai Rose Chiffon

Californian poppies as most people know them are a hard, brilliant orange. 'Rose Chiffon' is something else entirely: semi-double, ruffled flowers in dusky rose, blush and cream, sitting above the same fine blue-grey filigree foliage that makes the species worth growing even out of flower.

It belongs on poor, dry, sharply drained ground in full sun, which is a rare thing to be able to say. Gravel paths, the top of a wall, the parched strip beside a drive — all the places nothing else wants.

Sow it where it is to flower and never try to move it. Eschscholzia makes a long taproot early and will simply die rather than be transplanted. Left alone it seeds itself about generously, and the self-sown seedlings are always stronger than anything you raise deliberately.