There are at least seventy species of Aquilegia, including Britain’s native Aquilegia vulgaris.  When grown together most can form hybrids, producing a bewildering range of horticultural hybrid varieties of uncertain parentage that go under the general name of Aquilegia x hybrida.

Clump-forming herbaceous perennials with long-stalked, ternately divided basal leaves and erect, leafy stems bearing bell-shaped flowers with spreading, coloured sepals and petals with spurs, on branched stems

Common names include granny’s nightcap, granny’s bonnet and dancing columbine.  Names that happily reflect the sometimes garishly coloured hybrids – their delicately pleated flowers waving on tall, wire-thin stems, often with curled and elongated spurs.

Among our favourites are ‘Nivea’ and ‘Black Barlow’.  ‘Nivea’ is pure white; an upright plant to 80cm, with divided, light green leaves and abundant, creamy-white flowers 5cm in width, with short, curled spurs.  It comes true from seed, and looks lovely in small colonies. June-July. 76 cm.

By way of a complete contrast Barlow forms are like spiky pompoms and are actually a full double stellata form. These ancient forms have been cultivated for many centuries, and include Nora, Blue, Black, Purple, Christa, and Rose Barlows.

Black Barlow’ is a particular favourite – an upright perennial, with grey-green divided leaves and distinctive, pompon-like, deep purple flowers in early spring and summer.  June-July. 90cm.

Aspect

• South, North, east or West facing
• Exposed or sheltered

Soil

• Moist but well drained
• Neutral, acid or alkaline
• Loam, chalk, sand or clay

Propagation

• Propogate by seed sown in pots in a cold frame as soon as seed is ripe or in spring
• They can also be propagated by division in spring but the plant will be slow to recover

Suggested planting locations and garden types

• Cottage/informal garden, flower borders and beds
• They make excellent cut flowers if picked when half open

Though all columbines want well-drained soil, other cultivation needs vary with variety. A. alpina (alpine) types, which grow in mountainside scree, prefer a rich, gritty soil. A. caerulea, which grow naturally on mountainsides and in arid landscapes, can survive in sandy, poor soil, though they thrive in garden loam with a little more water than their native habitat offers. Caerulea varieties tolerate more sun than our native A. canadensis, which is predominantly a woodland plant that likes dappled shade.

Images: ‘Nivea’ image courtesy of www.hardy-plant.org.uk / ‘Black Barlow’ image courtesy of www.botanus.com

If you haven’t already done so, start staking and training your taller herbaceous plants. The vigorous growth of many perennials and climbers often needs a helping hand to prevent them flopping over, and putting plant supports in place early means that even the most obvious ones can be hidden by the foliage in just a few weeks.

Create nest-like supports for your larger herbaceous plants, as well as taller arches and wigwam structures for sweet peas, pumpkins, runner beans and gourds to scramble through!  We love edging our beds with the smaller off-cuts too.

At the Garden House we use twiggy sticks (cuttings from your shrubs can be useful here), birch trimmings, straight hazel branches, bamboo canes or willow.

Most of our staking was done under the creative eye of Bea Andrews, ex-head gardener at Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill garden, who has a really natural way of staking plants.  Her ideas for supports, both large and small, have given wonderful structure to the garden as you can see in our photos, as well as creating interest as the plants grow (that’s Bea in the grey hat!).