Susie’s Garden
Fuchsias look so delicate and pretty but are hardier than you think – just the thing to make your garden look spectacular!
Ihave a lovely pair of earrings, made for me by a friend, that were inspired by fuchsia flowers. Sparkly and pretty, they are made of overlapping bits of lightweight balsa wood and painted with little dots of iridescent pink, purple and blue. Fuchsias come in a range of sumptuous colours and have often been featured in art, or used as ideas for craftwork, like the earrings my friend made.
The only kind of fuchsia that I can grow outside in my North Pennine garden is the hardy Fuchsia magellanica. This is the shrub that in frost-free gardens along the west coast is used to make hedges that are smothered in dainty purple and red flowers. Whereas I have to
prune groundborderof Cornish westernmy perennial,level gardenshardy Scottishevery fuchsiathrivethe yearor hedgesin to like a fertile, Hardy moist fuchsiassoil. can be grown in partial shade and like a good mulch of leafmould or compost in autumn.
I grow a variety that has charming pendant flowers in a pale shade of pink, a bit like my earrings! If I want to grow the more showy, tender fuchsias, plants that need to be overwintered in frost-free conditions, then I buy mini-plants from a nursery which I then grow on.
Fuchsias make a good choice for seasonal bedding and containers as they flower from summer to autumn. This year I am growing Fuchsia “Thalia” in pots because it drops its flowers when they are finished so I don’t need to deadhead. It
produces abundant orangescarlet flowers with very long tubes, set off by dark olivegreen leaves. It can’t stand a drop in temperature lower than 5 degrees so will just last until the autumn.
To keep fuchsias in good condition they need watering enough so that the compost is moist but don’t leave plants standing in water as they don’t like being waterlogged. You can buy trailing varieties for hanging baskets, climbing fuchsias that can be trained vertically, or standard specimens for patio containers.
With their flouncy skirts and colours ranging from sugar pink to rich velvety purple these are definitely plants that add glamour.