ERYNGIUM PLANUM – 5 litre pot

This is the second of our Sea Holly offering – whilst the Little Hobbit is a small plant this is much more dramatic with showy globe-shaped grey-blue flower heads at 4 feet.

A true perennial, it has strong, erect stems that are an ornamental silver-blue colour. These divide and divide again to give innumerable small “pin-cushion flower-heads. This is planted all over the Long Border at Enchanted Gardens and they are “alive” with pollinating insects adding drama and colour, it is a wonderful, long-lasting cut flower, fresh or dried.  They are surprisingly robust and hardy, coming through the wild winters here with no problems.  You will need to divide them every three years as they expand once they are happy.  Reaching to over 150cm they are very “Bee dramatic” and we have a vey robust colony self sown into the stable yard where they are multiplying quickly with no mean of removal, so we call them very naughty and hope they will behave one day.

We have ceased growing other varieties of Eryngium as they are so problematic to germinate from seed – the more they are altered genetically and certain traits bred in or out they become very tricky and do not thrive in our opinion, we like to stick to standard species, traditional and true perennial.