Tuesday 21 April 2009

Hardy Geraniums


I never thought that there would come a time when I complained about the rain, but with 133mm since the beginning of the month we really have had enough. With our  heavy soil it has made any gardening virtually impossible, so that one gets that sinking feeling that already things are out of control.  Still it is not only the weeds that are growing. I have already roses in flower - Marechal Niel, in fact one of my great disappointments, since I find its colour rather 'fade', and one of my favourites, Stanwell Perpetual. Also showing well are the hardy geraniums.

Most of us use them a lot. They are entirely benign, many of them flowering for long periods, and happy to put up with almost anything that the weather might throw at them.  What some of you may not have picked up on is the arrival in recent years of a great number of hybrids, and while new is not necessarily better, in the case of hardy geraniums it often is.  I am mainly concerned with those that can put up with our heat. What I would call the meadow and woodland varieties have not done so well for me, and that includes, alas, G. Spinners, which is a most marvellous blue. Moreover I am not so keen on the pink flowering varieties, that is to say the G. endressi types, though they are very easy to grow. But that still leaves the blues and the purples of which there are legion.

The most ground hugging of these are the G. sanguineums, though some of these can be pink. Indeed just to be contrary I am particularly fond of G.sang; lancastriense, which is  a lovely light pink with crimson veins, but there is nothing very new about it. Of the many new ones I can personally recommend 'Cedric Morris', Elspeth' and 'Glenluce', not that I find a huge difference between them. Related to sanguineum is G. Dilys, which is given very good marks by Thierry Denis, one of the many good suppliers of hardy geraniums in France (info@jardindumorvan.com) but also by Cristopher Lloyd. One of its alleged attractions is its 'résistance gaullienne à la secheresse'. I grow it but I cannot say that it really makes a great impression. It is supposed to like every sort of soil, but I sometimes wonder whether it really finds our heavy clay to its liking.

I have no reservations on the other hand about G. Nimbus, Jolly Bee, Orion, Rozanne, and Tiny Monster. Jolly Bee and Rozanne are very similar. Both are reminiscent of G.wallichianumBuxton's Blue that some of you may have grown in England, with their lovely clear blue flowers that starting a little later in the year than some varieties go on flowering until November, and unlike Buxton's Blue they can both take our full sun. Nimbus and Orion are bigger animals, or certainly taller, and are what I would call genuine border plants. They do not flower for quite so long as the two just mentioned, but long enough to earn their place in any garden. I have found that cutting them back does not produce a second flush of flowers, but the new growth is more attractive than the old. Similar, and often strongly recommended is G. Brookside, but in my experience it does not do so well, perhaps because of not liking our heat. Still it is fair to say that all three should be preferred to the old favourite, G.Johnson's Blue, on account of their longer flowering period.

G.Tiny Monster is a cross between sanguineum and psilostemon. Its colour,purple, it derives from both its parents, though lacking the dark centre of psilostemon. Its sanguineum genes mean that it does not grow too tall, and therefore does not need staking, which is a great advantages But it has the vigour of a psilostemon,  also a great advantage, and makes in every way a marvellous groundcover plant.

There are of course plenty of other hardy geraniums. I have not mentioned the many new varietes with purple leaves - G. Midnight Reiter strains - since dappled shade and a bit more humidty than I normally possess is their thing. An old favourite would be G. Bressingham Flair derived from psilostemon, but a much shorter plant, and therefore easier to deal with. Also in the purple flowered range is G.Sandrine. It is rather similar to two other geraniums that I should perhaps have mentioned, G.Ann Folkard, and Anne Thompson. Both these are purple, and both trail from a central base rather than clumping up; indeed you could almost call the former a climbing plant since if happy it will take over a small shrub, in the same way as a clematis. But they are both outshone in flower colour by Sandrine, though perhaps she is less vigourous than they are. Incidentally I came across G.Sandrine at Bernard Lacrouts, an excellent supplier of vivace near to Vic en Bigorre (http://vivacemonde.free.fr), and the same could equally be said of Jane Phillips at her Le Jardin Anglais (www.lejardinanglais.com) at Montgaillard, who I see also stocks G.Sandrine.