Garden Layout - Plants - Violas
I don't have many violas in the garden, not because I don't admire them, but I find their uses are limited, and they are seem prone to downy mildew. The same is even more true for their cousins, the pansies, which never do terribly well, no matter how carefully I tend them.
This is Viola 'Laura Cawthorne', a shade tolerant variety with lilac colored flowers throughout the summer. It does well in the rockery, and has spread to cover about 450mm x 300mm. The flowers are borne on 200mm stems, and dead-heading seems to prolong the flowering period.	Viola Laura Cawthorne in the Rockery
Viola Laura Cawthorne	It is a perennial, quite hardy, although we haven't had any really hard winters to test this over the last 3 or 4 years. It hasn't self-seeded, yet, but this may be because the dead-heading reduces the number of seed capsules produced and matured. I find that its colour is very similar to that of the neighbouring Aubrietia, and 'Laura' picks up that colour when it first flowers in mid-spring and carries it through for the rest of the summer.
This is Viola 'Molly Sanderson', an unusual black viola that flowers throughout the year. I bought one original plant in 1996, and I now have about a dozen of its great-grand-children dotted about the garden, in pots or as 'fillers' in the flower beds. It remains quite small and delicate, rarely getting any higher than 150mm, and the flowers are approx 25mm in diameter.	Viola Molly Sanderson
I find it works well with Alyssum 'Carpet of Snow', the mixture of black and white being quite striking and effective. Maybe it's just luck, but this variety does seem to be more resistant to powdery mildew than most of the other varieties of viola that I've tried.
Viola Azure Wing	Viola 'Azure Wing' is a small, dainty viola that does well in spring, but can become leggy and untidy as the season progresses and is often cut back hard in mid-summer to encourage a new crop of flowers for autumn and the winter. Unchecked, it can reach a height of 300mm and a spread of the same, but, by the time it reaches that sort of size, it is past it's best.

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