Echiums – Majestic Long Flowering Perennials

Echiums – These Long Flowering Perennials Will Knock Your Socks Off!

One of the things I enjoy here is growing plants that either don’t do that well or don’t grow at all in Zimbabwe, especially long flowering perennials that come back year after year. You’ve seen my Ceanothus which, of course, was already well established when we moved in. It is the most glorious color blue and just covered in flowers during early spring. It’s over now, bar one or two party animals, but it was glorious while it lasted.

Clematis

Just as it’s going over, however, my Clematis has started flowering and has replaced Ceanothus blue with vivid lilac. I bought it last year when it had one flower on it and that was all it got which was rather disappointing. In fact, I am told that the Tomales Bay area is a bit temperate for them. It seemed the case because it hardly did a thing the whole growing season, just sulked in its pot. It virtually disappeared in winter but has now decided life is good and has grown two feet in the last couple of weeks, as well as putting out a couple of blooms. As it’s a long blooming perennial, I hope to have many more flowers before it’s done for the season.

My Hostas are coming on in their shade bed although the snails are having a field day with them, no matter how much snail bait I put down. The funny thing is, they are gobbling up the front plants and totally ignoring the back ones!

My beautiful, spring flowering Tulips are almost at an end but I’ll definitely plant more this fall because, whilst their day was short, it was very sweet.  In colder climates these are perennial but it’s a little warm for them here but I’m going to keep them growing in their pots and might be lucky. I planted them in pots which I dug into the bed so that I could lift them once they’d flowered and now I’m replacing them with spring and summer plants that have been growing in my courtyard. Although they are  perennials in colder climates, here in California they don’t flower that well again and are best replaced each year.

I have Lupines newly planted in the flower beds and yesterday I received my last package from my online ordering spree and in it were 18 little Lisianthus plants, hopefully waiting for a spot in my already crowded beds. The beds don’t look crowded yet because the bulbs and bare roots still have to show up and fill out but, trust me, there’s precious little room left for these sun loving plants! Still, I will make a plan and plant them between other plants and in hastily bought pots and perhaps my neighbor will get one or two. In return, he’s letting me adopt a giant Squill, yet to flower since he bought 12 of them a couple of years ago. He says they are the largest bulbs in the world.

Echiums

But most spectacular of all at the moment are the magnificent Echiums, or Prides of Madeira, that are lining the highways and byways of the Pacific coastline. I had one in Zimbabwe and thought it looked quite good until I saw how they are supposed to grow.

They are quite fabulous in their natural setting, reaching well over 8 feet high, with spires of blue, purple, lilac or pink. Some of them are as round as they are tall! They love the sun, don’t need much water and, as I discovered while photographing them, Hummingbirds can’t get enough of them. These majestic, long flowering perennials will carry on flowering until late spring, early summer.

Having seen how massive they get, I realized that this was one plant I definitely could not fit into my little patch of green. However! I’ve just discovered that there is a mini version of this wonderful plant at Annie’s Annuals which is dark reddish pink in color, so I think I’ll have to use one of my new pots and pop one into it.

Happy gardening and please don’t forget your sunscreen. There’s so much skin cancer about, you must protect your skin.

By the way, here is a link to a list of gopher resistant plants: http://www.groundcoversandgardening.com/gopher resistant plants.

If you want to buy plants that deer probably won’t eat, look here.

Addendum: I decided to strike cuttings and ended up with three little plants. Sadly two of them got hit by frost but my sole survivor is putting out its first flower now.

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