Gardening

GARDENING Perennial Lobelias

Weall know the trailing or bushy lobelias used in bedding schemes up and down the country. Their big cousins, the Perennial lobelias are very different and are great plants for borders in a sunny spot giving lots of brightly coloured flowers in summer.

The easiest and hardiest perennial ones are varieties of cardinalis and speciosa. These grow from arosette of leaves and send up twotothree feet / 60-90cm spires of colourful flowers in summer.

Traditionally they are considered to be bog plants. Indeed,they grow wonderfully in moist or wet soilsinsummer and can even succeed at pond edge plants. However, I’ve found that these varieties will also perform well in dry soil, although they don’tgrowquite so tall. We’ve found that they perform wonderfully in full sun in our very welldrained soil. These types are usually winter hardy, although slugscan be a problem in wet soils.

We’ve tried lots of varieties in our garden to find the hardiest. The bright red ‘Bees’ Flame’ also has bronze leaves through the summer as does ‘Russian Princess’ which has shocking pink flowers. ‘Tania’ has multi-coloured leaves in spring, turning to plain green in summer and deeppink flowers. Another spring-variegated variety is the lovely pale pink ‘Compton Pink.’ ‘Hadspen Purple’ is also very reliable.

The unattractively-named species, siphilitica, is lower growing, bushy and very tough. The basic species has blue flowers, and the variety ‘Alba’ has pure white.

Propagation is best by division in spring. Clumps can be cut up into chunks and replanted. Sometimes it’s possible to dividedownto individual rosettes, but these take longer to make good plants.

The less hardy South American varieties of Lobelia are trickier to grow. The most impressive and easy was Lobelia tupa, known as Devil’s Tobacco. This grows to eight feet /240cm tall withflower stems studdedwithred or orange-red flowers from July to October. It needsvery well drained soil in winter. It is easily grown from seed but needs help getting through its first winter in theground –a deep mulch or acovering of pine twigstoinsulate it. Once establisheditwillsurvive down to -10 or -14c. We also tried the species bridgesii, polyphylla and laxiflora but these seemto only survive the mildest winters outdoors here.

Janet and Irun Plant Hunters’ Fairs, specialist plant fairs at wonderful locations offering special reduced entry rates on the plant fair dates.

Plant Fair dates for your diary:

Capesthorne Hall, Macclesfield on Sunday, August 15, Garden and Fair £3.50;

The Dorothy Clive Garden on Sunday, August 29 and Monday, August 30, Garden and Fair £4 (usually £9) ; Weston Park, Shifnal on Sunday, September 12, Garden and Fair £3.50 (Usually £8).

Entry to all these fairs is by advance ticket only. Please see www.planthuntersfairs.co.uk for links to purchase tickets online.

Martin Blow