Miss Jessopp's Upright Rosemary Plants

'Miss Jessopp's Upright' Rosemary Plants

Miss Jessopp's Upright gets called the "Hedge Rosemary", but she's equally good as a shrub in a mixed border.

Wild rosemary plants have a tendency to sprawl with age: they still make a decent low hedge with attentive clipping, but Miss Jessopp's Upright, or Erecta, is made for the job.

This gloriously structural evergreen shrub is a useful herb providing aromatic rosemary needles all year round to use with roast lamb, in soups, casseroles and even sweet bakes.

The the bees go crazy for the pretty pale lavender lipped flowers in late Spring.
So much to love about this handsome, reliable plant, which will

Features

• Better hedging than wild species
• Uses: casseroles, roasts, with lamb and in some sweet bakes
• Taste: aromatic and oily
• Harvest: all year round
• Storage: use fresh; can be frozen and dried
• Height: 1.5m
• Colour: pale blue flowers in spring
• Spacing: 1.5m
• Life: perennial, evergreen
• RHS Plants for Pollinators
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Growing Rosemary

A Mediterranean native, rosemary is happiest in a really sunny spot, on poor, sharply drained soil. So dig in plenty of sharp sand or horticultural grit when planting, and you won't need to worry about feeding.

If you are on heavy clay, choose places where water doesn't collect in Winter.
We recommend that you improve drainage by creating mounds and ridges, not by digging stuff into a planting hole.  

It is happy in coastal gardens, and can be used as an informal hedge.

Keep snipping the aromatic sprigs all year round.

In Your Garden Design

Good companions include other herbs in the poor, sharply-drained soil camp such as lavender, oregano and thyme.
Upright Rosemary is a nice lush shrub for a sunny spot, making a fine, fragrant ornamental hedge, or dotted among your perennials for easy evergreen architecture.

Plant herbs in recycled wooden wine containers or sensual terracotta is always in fashion: Rosemary is ideal for containers near your back door or around seated areas where it can be enjoyed.

It makes a brilliant partner to cottage garden perennials, providing year-round structure and greenery toward the middle of a border among sun lovers such as Russian sage, catmint, roses, sisyrinchiums and sea hollies. Growing to around 1.5m tall, it's brilliant as a low hedge, too.

Did you know?

Propagated by plantsman Edward Augustus Bowles (1865-1954). It was named after his neighbour and fellow gardener Euphemia Jessopp, who first gave him the cutting.

In the kitchen, a sprig or two of those oily, aromatic needles is a must thrown into a classic Valencian paella of chicken and beans as it simmers. Or use with slivers of garlic to flavour a joint of lamb for roasting. Chopped and whizzed with olive oil, red wine vinegar and mustard, it makes a fabulously punchy dressing that's perfect with chicken salad.