Planting partners

Epimediums are at home beneath small garden trees such as the winter-flowering cherry, Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’, or the multi-stemmed silver birch. The colonising evergreen epimediums are ideal planted alongside assertive plants, such as blue-flowered Brunnera macrophylla, hart’s tongue ferns or white foxgloves. The less invasive hybrids go well among hardy geraniums, ‘Bowles’s Golden Grass’, or the frothy foam flower, Tiarella cordifolia. E. grandiflorum varieties are at home in acid soil under rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias. They also grow happily among later-flowering Himalayan blue poppies, or Meconopsis betonicifolia, and summer heaths. The Chinese species enjoy the same shady conditions as oriental hellebores. They flower alongside the little blue bulbs