Take your pick of artichokes to suit taste
The cardoon is an old Victorian favourite, once grown as a vegetable and blanched for use rather like celery, but today it’s grown for its striking silvery, thistle-like foliage.
We also call Cynara cardunculus the globe artichoke and if you want to make a statement in the herbaceous border then look no further than this wonderful, overthe-top plant.
Cynara are robust plants with grey-hairy, lobed leaves and globose purple flowerheads. C cardunculus is a herbaceous perennial that can grow several feet high, particularly if it has its roots in a fertile, well-drained soil in full sun and is sheltered from strong winds. In very cold winters, help protect it with a dry mulch.
If you want to grow it as a foliage plant, cut down flower stems as they emerge in summer, and watch out for snails, slugs and blackfly.
And if you want to make another statement, grow Helianthus tuberosus, AKA the Jerusalem artichoke, an equally statuesque plant (it isn’t actually an artichoke as we know it – it’s a relative of the sunflower and it’s a true native of North America, where it is more commonly known as the sunchoke).
Although it boasts attractive yellow flowers perched on 3m (10ft) stems, it’s grown more for its below-ground tubers, which can be cooked or eaten raw.
You can usually buy them in March and April from a garden centre via the internet. Plant them a good six inches deep in wellprepared soil, with the tubers spaced a foot apart because they need plenty of room in which to grow. When stems reach a foot or so in height, draw soil around them to help stabilise plants as they grow. In midsummer, cut back the stems (including the flowerheads) to five feet in height to stop the plants from being damaged by wind.
It’s probably because Jerusalem artichokes are easy to cultivate that people are tempted to leave them alone, to let them grow as they will. But year on year, the quality of the edible tubers degrades unless the plants are dug up and replanted in fertile soil.
When the foliage starts to turn yellow in autumn, prune to leave three-inch stumps above ground level. Even a small piece of tuber left in the ground will spring into growth, so unless you remove every vestige of the plant, you’ll find them springing up like weeds.