Carol Klein picks her favourite euphorbias and reveals her gardening week
My pick of the best EUPHORBIAS There are bound to be several that suit your soil and situation
Euphorbias are unique. Their startling heads of luminous lime-green light up the garden for months on end. Some clamber over walls, others make bright tussocks in the spring garden while some make substantial evergreen structures. As early as the beginning of March, even some of the deciduous species have woken and are already making a determined job of lifting the curtain on the beginning of spring.
Some of the euphorbias we grow in our gardens are versions of native wild plants. Euphorbia amygdaloides, the wood spurge, creates splashes of vivid colour along our hedgerows. It often crops up with bluebells or earlier on with self-seeded honesty, escaped from a nearby garden.
There are variations in foliage colour, too, and sharp-eyed nursery people have selected numerous varieties. The best of them are essentially purple-leaved, such as E. amygdaloides ‘Purpurea’, whose foliage, especially after a cold snap, is the colour of beetroot. E. amygdaloides is an accommodating species, thriving even in dark and shady places, under hedges or among tree roots.
E. myrsinites likes the opposite conditions, thriving best in dry, sunny locations and is especially at home where it can flop and scramble over a dry stone wall or the like. From Turkey and the Middle East, where it grows on arid mountainsides, this spurge has close-packed glaucous leaves, slightly pointed, which spiral thickly around its dangling stems. It loves the same conditions as sea hollies, auriculas and dry-loving grasses like Stipa tenuissima. In flower as early as late March, the bracts persist for months, often changing colour to orange and tan.
E. palustris, another spurge that revels in damp conditions, is clearly visible from yards away. Its chunky flower heads gather themselves together during April, a tight-packed bouquet of vivid lime-green bracts nestling in soft green leaves with a touch of pink. Rapidly the stems push up, exploding into a firework display of brilliant acid yellow. Stems can make 1.5-1.8m (5-6ft), and some years may need staking.
In contrast, E. characias needs sun and light and thrives in poor soil, where it will often seed itself around prolifically, making a sea of 90cm (3ft) stems clothed in whorls of narrow blue-green leaves.
Although the type plant has greenish bracts with dark centres, its subspecies E. characias wulfenii has yellow green bracts and yellow flowers within.
These magnificent Mediterraneans look best in a gravel garden or among other plants of shorter stature on banks or raised beds.
Spurges are fairly promiscuous, seeding themselves and often hybridising naturally.
In the case of
E. martini, the cross is between E. characias and E. amygdaloides, a sunbather and a shade lover. It’s a striking evergreen; its deep red stems are well clothed with soft, green leaves tinged with crimson, and the large and handsome flower heads are clustered around the top of the stems, vivid green with crimson eyes.
At this time of year euphorbias light up our gardens and there are bound to be several that suit your soil and situation.
'Some of the euphorbias we grow in our gardens are versions of native wild plants'