Carol Klein’s in love with foxgloves!
Along with verbascums and penstemons, they look wonderful – and slugs hate them!
‘Their ability to thrive in awkward conditions makes them enormously useful in our gardens’
Acouple of years ago, we conducted an experiment in a small bed, close to my shed, to test several plants for their reputation as being slug resistant. Several of them belong to a family with an unattractive name – Scrophulariaceae!
Sure enough, they remained untouched by gastropods. It was interesting without being conclusive but what was particularly striking was how attractive most of the plants were. At first sight you were struck by their beauty, regardless of their slug resistance.
Native foxgloves, forms of Digitalis purpurea, are part of this family and are probably our most iconic wildflower. They stand head and shoulders above the stitchworts and knapweeds that so often accompany them in the hedgerows and road verges where they make their home. Their ability to thrive in awkward conditions makes them enormously useful in our gardens, especially alongside hedges, walls and fences.
Next year the garden here at Glebe Cottage will be awash with their tall spires. We’re in the process of potting on a mass of seedlings from module trays and later on they’ll be planted out in the shadier parts of the garden.
Perhaps it’s the toxins in their leaves and flowers that deter slugs, along with the furry texture of the leaves. Having said that, there are several perennial foxgloves whose leaves are much smoother and they’re just as toxic.
Digitalis ferruginea, the rusty foxglove, has tall stems of small, brown flowers and smooth leaves. Both it and D. parviflora are perennial, as is D. lutea. With their rosettes of basal leaves, and straight, ramrod stems, they make excellent plants at the corner of a bed. Not only are they great punctuation marks in the summer, but they’re equally effective in their winter guise. Other foxgloves have been in the news recently. On the Botanic Nursery stand at Chelsea, Terry and Mary Baker were showing a new pale yellow foxglove called ‘Lemoncello’.
New varieties of foxgloves
are often introduced at flower shows. The same is true of another member of the family, verbascums. The species themselves vary enormously, though the great majority have yellow flowers. The woolly mullein, Verbascum lanata, is a common wildflower especially prevalent on poor alkaline soil. In fact, all verbascums enjoy such conditions and thrive best in full sun. Most are biennial, but over the past century a range of new varieties have
increased the possibilities for us gardeners. The chaixii hybrids have introduced a broad range of new colours from ‘Pink Domino’ (self-explanatory) to ‘Cotswold Beauty’, whose flowers are a rich terracotta colour. Although they’re shortlived perennials, you can easily make more from root cuttings taken during the winter. There are lots of ways of
using them, from growing them individually in large pots and placing them perhaps in a row along a path, to setting them among perennials and grasses
in an informal planting. Biennial verbascums can be grown from seed. Sow sparingly on the surface of seed compost, cover with grit and water by standing the tray in shallow water.
Last, but not least, in this delightful trio are penstemon. All the species are natives of North America, some are hardy while others are on the tender side. Nowadays numerous are available to the amateur gardener and they can be increased so easily. Simply peel off sideshoots with a short heel or take tip cuttings a few inches in length, cutting underneath a node with a sharp knife. Remove the lower leaves and nip out the tip of the cutting, then push them into gritty compost firmly as far as the first leaves. Water well and put in a bright position, though out of direct sunlight.
There are surely penstemon to suit everyone’s taste from the red, flared bells of ’Firebird’ to the soft and mystical, blue
P. heterophyllus ‘Blue Gem’.