Dreamy spires

Foxgloves, which can be planted now, provide the perfect link between the garden and the countryside, says John Hoyland

- John Hoyland

FOXGLOVES, with their towering spires of bee-friendly flowers, are one of our most imposing wildflowers and one of the few to have jumped from the woodland edge and the verges of country lanes into our gardens. At the beginning of the 20th century, Gertrude Jekyll was enthusiastic about their use in herbaceous borders and recommended them to create a link between the order of the garden and the wildness of the countryside. Today, they are comfortably at home in cottage-style gardens, in perennial meadows and even in minimalist modern gardens.

In the wild, the common foxglove has purple flowers with little variation, save the occasional plant with white flowers, but nurseries and plant breeders have introduced numerous cultivars that encompass a range of colours, often with speckled flowers. These cultivars are produced from seed and the colour of the flowers is not always as advertised, but ‘Sutton’s Apricot’ is reliable, with warm apricot buds that fade to pastel pink as the flower ages. The Excelsior group is another dependable strain that ranges through pale to dark pink with purple spots and with flowers that are much larger than those of the species.