Carol Klein picks out her favourite foxgloves
Their magnificent spires are rising up now, making them a standout feature in our beds and borders
Our native foxglove is probably our most iconic wildflower. Even non-gardeners recognise it. In the garden at Glebe Cottage now, tall spikes of native Digitalis
purpurea are rising up here and there through clumps of lower-growing perennials; their pink, white and apricot spires adding height and interest.
Most of the purple foxgloves are self-sown, appearing around the edge of the garden beneath hedges, just as they do in the surrounding countryside.
The white and apricot varieties were originally grown from seed. We sow it any time between April and June and though you can sow directly in rows in the veg garden as you would with other biennials, such as wallflowers or sweet Williams, we normally sow into seed trays. It’s easier to keep an eye on seedlings and to prick out promptly.
Because foxglove seed is so fine, there’s always a temptation to sow it too thickly but it’s far better to sow sparsely and avoid damping off. Since
D. purpurea is a biennial, dying after it has flowered and set seed, we sow every year so that there are ‘overlapping’ plants. They’ll make a large rosette of leaves in their first year but it’s not until their second year that they’ll produce the spikes of bells we love them for.
Everyone must have watched bumblebees pollinating foxgloves, landing on the protruding lip and then diving in, emerging covered in pollen. For sure, the two have evolved together – they’re a perfect fit!
We use native foxgloves in several parts of the garden: the shady garden, the shed garden and in Alice’s garden. Since they’re essentially hedgerow plants, they can cope with uneven light and situations that are sometimes droughty, sometimes damp.
But D. purpurea isn’t the only foxglove we grow. Many of the others aren’t as showy as our own native plants, but they have their own seductive charms. The rusty foxglove,
D. ferruginea goes with everything. Its flowers, small and hooded, are a bizarre mixture of browns, creams
and yellows and they thickly clothe the stout stems. Even more unusual,
D. parviflora has tiny, brown flowers held tightly side by side. Both the inflorescence and the stem are covered in fine, soft fluff.
All foxgloves create a small landing stage at the entrance to each flower on which bees and other pollinating insects can land. Immediately inside the bell of the flower are two yellow anthers, bristling with pollen with which any prospective pollinator is anointed.
The seed heads that follow are remarkable. Firstly, they’re thick and full, barbed at one end presumably to put off grazing animals in their native Spain and Portugal, and thickly crowding the stems. Secondly, the stems are straight as a dye. These bronze ramrods, which last all winter through, make the perfect punctuation to a narrow herbaceous bed where there’s not enough space for a fastigiate shrub. This is a very beautiful plant, rather odd, but very desirable.
Recently on Gardeners’ World, in the Macmillan Cancer Support Legacy Garden at the Chatsworth Show, we featured a foxglove that was used several times. D. lanata takes its name from ‘lana’ – wool, its leaves that are soft to the touch. Its stems are straight, dark maroon in colour, and its curious flowers are gold and bronze within, and have white lips to advertise the landing strip, the way in to the nectar and pollenrich flowers. In common with other foxgloves, D. lanata, the woolly foxglove, is a good mixer.
Though the tall spires of foxgloves may be a standout feature in beds and borders, they don’t push themselves forward at the expense of their neighbours. We mix them with geraniums, grasses, astrantias and other umbels, and their social graces are impeccable.