Growing eryngiums
Ladies and gentlemen, let us pause from our busy lives for a few minutes in order to consider the eryngium. Those of you an eye for a bargain will already be subscribers to Gardeners’ World Magazine, and a few of you will have noticed my writing about eryngiums in the ‘We love’ pages of the July 2011 edition. I would like, if I may, to expand on that a bit and introduce you to a few more.
I love eryngiums: they are about the only plants that manage to be architectural, delicate, pretty and slightly dangerous. Quite an impressive combination I am sure you will agree. These are my top four:
Eryngium tripartitum – little dancing thimbles of blue with spiny ruffs of metallic silver. One of the most attractive features of this family is that the colour of the flower leaches down the stems so the whole thing is suffused with blue
Eryngium bourgattii – the best blue of them all. A sort of steely azure as cold (yet devastatingly alluring) as the eyes of a mermaid. The best is probably one called Picos Blue – I know, I have mentioned that one as well but this is a picture of the one in my garden.
Eryngium padanifolium ‘Physic Purple’ – a South American variety that has very striking muddy red flowers. The leaves are fleshy and viciously spiked, snails tend to cunningly hide amongst them. Beware: the spines face inwards so to reach in for the snail is fine but if you pull your hand out again too fast you will undoubtedly end up bleeding. Here it is with a helenium called ‘Moorheim Beauty’.
Eryngium giganteum – this one I wrote about in the magazine but just wanted to show you what a fine and handsome corpse this plant makes. Still maintaining its shape long into the winter. It also looks great with grasses.
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