Gardening David Wheeler
GERANIUMS
‘I want to live in a landscape, not the intensive care ward of a plant hospital.’ Thus speaks Dennis Thompson, a US professor of horticulture, quoted in a new book on hardy geraniums (cranesbills).
He goes on to say, in a few anthropomorphic words, that he doesn’t want his garden ‘to be a prison where I must do bed checks nightly to be certain that someone isn’t assaulting someone else’. In essence, he’s striking a blow against the ‘difficult’ plants that we gardeners are prone to covet, more for their scarcity perhaps and occasionally – come on, admit it – one-upmanship.
Geraniums – herbaceous perennials – should not be confused with pelargoniums (half-hardy plants, usually grown in pots for outdoor situations in summer or year-round decoration indoors) that seem destined to suffer under the same – wrong – name.
There are, indeed, some rarities among the hardy geranium clan, but generally they’re an easily procured and amiable lot, largely indifferent to location, soil conditions and treatment.
Many are native wild flowers found throughout Britain and mainland Europe and beyond. Growing up in the Cotswolds, I was familiar with one of the best – robust, blue-flowered Geranium pratense (meadow cranesbill) – blooming for many weeks from midsummer beside ditches and streams, on rough ground and roadside verges.
The hardy geranium flower palette extends from chalky white through myriad pinks to alluring purples and pure blues, with a few mysterious hues seldom seen in other summer-flowering plants. Many are daintily veined with a contrasting colour; some are double- flowered, none lovelier than ‘Plenum Violaceum’, bred by eminent Sussex nurseryman Walter Ingwersen in 1946.
For striking colour, nothing beats the Armenian cranesbill, Geranium psilostemon, wayward and rangy in its habit, with petals of bold magenta. In common with others of its kin, it’s easily ‘refreshed’, after its first flush of flowers, by scissoring away spent stems – an easy task that rewards the gardener for several months with a succession of new blooms.
Foliage varies too. Some, such as ‘Black Beauty’, ‘Dusky Crug’ and ‘Elizabeth Ann’ have distinctly bronzymaroon leaves; others are plain green; some are variegated, splashed with cream and ivory markings; yet more (notably low-growing Geranium renardii) are grey-green and unusually textured. Those from the Himalayan foothills ( G. clarkei and its cultivars, ‘Kashmir Blue’, ‘Natalie’ and ‘Nimbus’) have a mound of finely dissected greenery below flowers standing proud and plentiful. Leaves of the straggly but indispensable ‘Buxton’s Variety’ take on a coppery appearance as autumn approaches. More still – sniff a crushed leaf of groundcovering, shade-loving G. macrorrhizum – they are potently aromatic.
I could deafen many ears with my applause for hardy geraniums, but I needn’t bother. American nurserywoman Robin Parer does that for me in The Plant Lover’s Guide to Hardy Geraniums (Timber Press in association with Kew, £17.99), from which I took Professor Thompson’s words in my opening paragraph. Hers is a paean of praise for these easy-goers, with sumptuous photographs plentiful enough to compensate older readers now bereft of a garden of their own.
Yes, easy-going plants are, or should be, the gardener’s mainstay, best summed up by that ‘over-achiever’ (scholar, historian, biographer, naval attaché, barrister, diplomat, MP, government minister and Secretary General of the Council of Europe... oh, and gardener of supreme repute) Sir Peter Smithers, who died aged 92 in 2006: ‘I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself.’ When it comes to hardy geraniums, you must try very hard to do just that.