Plant cranesbills for an easy life

Hardy geraniums will reward you with flowers for months on end

Margery Fish of East Lambrook Manor in Somerset used to say, “When in doubt, plant a geranium.” Margery (1892-1969) championed these easy-going, bee-friendly plants in the 1960s; since then the choice of cultivars has grown enormously, because they hybridise freely. Some hybrids between closely related species can’t be fertilised due to pollen incompatibilities, so they flower for many months without producing any seeds. Luckily the sterile blooms still please the bees by producing nectar and pollen. In 1989 one of these sterile hybrids grew in Rozanne and Donald Waterer’s Somerset garden; a lax plant with distinctive blue f lowers from July to October. It was launched at the 2000 Chelsea Flower Show by Blooms of Bressingham and in 2013, ‘Rozanne’ was voted RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Centenary. Alan Bremner, who lives in the Orkney Isles, has raised many sterile hardy geraniums too, including mound-forming, dark-eyed, magenta-pink ‘Patricia’; low-growing purple-pink ‘Dilys’; pale-pink, grey-leaved ‘Dreamland’; and black-eyed, magenta-flowered ‘Dragon Heart’.

Geraniums for spring

Geraniums aren’t just for summer though. The various spring-flowering hardy geraniums prefer a woodland setting close to deciduous trees and shrubs. Geranium phaeum, found naturally in mountainous areas, is an excellent dry-shade plant with willowy wands of dainty March flowers in purple, white, lavender and rose madder. Seeds follow, and many garden-worthy seedlings have been named. Look out for G. phaeum ‘Our Pat’ with larger purple-black flowers, and paler ‘Lily Lovell’ with faded purple flowers colour-washed in grey. In May and June, the white form of our native woodland species, G. sylvaticum ‘Album’, is delightfully fresh in shadier spots. ‘Mayflower’ has white-centred, blue flowers – or try apple-blossom pink G. macrorrhizum ‘Album’ on a woodland edge, where it will form a loose mound and, as the pale-pink flowers fade, red seedheads linger into summer. For a purer white, compact ‘White Ness’ has lovely green foliage.

Native descendants

Lots of hardy geraniums are descendants of our June-flowering meadow cranesbill, Geranium pratense – a native bright-blue geranium found on roadside verges. This upright plant flowers just before most roses, the most famous form being white-veined, lavender-blue ‘Mrs Kendall Clark’, which looks like a heat haze in midsummer. Another G. pratense form has a jumping

gene that produces stripy blue and white f lowers. The correct name is ‘Striatum’, also sold under the trade name of ‘Splish-splash’. All single-flowered meadow cranesbills produce seeds that come true when sown. I don’t want lots of seedlings in my garden, so I cut or tug most of the stems away as the flowers fade. Double forms, with plenum in their names, tend to be short-lived. Compact hardy geraniums make great edgers for warm, sunny sites. Pale-pink ‘Mavis Simpson’ endures cold winters, and in my garden her prettily-veined flowers mingle with cobalt-blue Triteleia laxa ‘Koningin Fabiola’ often until late October.

I don’t want lots of seedlings so I tug most of the stems away as the flowers fade