Christmas has barely waned on the horizon and I can hardly wait for the new gardening season to begin. Patience is not one of my best virtues and the trickle of seed catalogues being dropped into the post box is getting me revved up. The tantalizing morsels of descriptive vegetables and dazzling flowers almost have me drooling as badly as Molly over her treats.
I do so love to turn the pages of an honest-to-goodness catalogue. Not very tree-friendly of me but I try to compensate by only ordering in three or four of my very favourites. The rest of the catalogues I peruse on my computer screen…and there are quite a number. I can see by my notations I am going to have to seriously pare down my wish list.
With the new year around the corner I am always curious to discover which plant the Perennial Plant Association has selected for their Plant of the Year. And bravo in their 2012 selection of Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’…more commonly known as Siberian bugloss.
It must have been a hard choice though, with the 2012 Runner Up honours going to Chelone lyonii ‘Hot Lips’, Heuchera ‘Caramel’ (coral bells) and Panicum virgatum ‘Northwind’ (switchgrass). Personally, I would have had to resort to flipping a coin between the brunnera and the chelone…also known as turtlehead. Both have stunning attributes.
We actually do have ‘Jack Frost’ in our garden…plus the plain Brunnera macrophylla, B. m. ‘Dawson’s White’, B. m. ‘Langtrees and B. m. ‘Mr. Morse’. Having the five of them is a testament to the wonderful virtues of this particular genus.
Delightfully suited for shady areas, they also tolerate some dappled sunshine…even a few hours of full sun although the variegated-leaf forms do tend to scorch given too much. Their large, heart-shaped leaves form a lovely round mound roughly a foot and a half high and dense enough to smother any trespassing weeds that would dare to set down roots. And the small, bright blue, forget-me-not-like flowers “float above the leaves on slender stems” to quote one brunnera fan.
‘Jack Frost’ has gorgeous silver leaves thinly edged in medium green with the veins starkly etched in the same green. The leaves on ‘Dawson’s White’…sometimes referred to as ‘Variegata’…have three shades of green variegation in their centres, held in place by irregular creamy-white edging. ‘Langtrees’ (syn. ‘Aluminium Spot’) is quite different with its silver grey elongated spots splashed just inside the edge of its medium green leaves.
I thought I had read somewhere…and made a note of the reference…that ‘Langtrees’ is one of the parents of ‘Jack Frost’ but after much searching I have yet to lay my hands on the verification. However, one good clue is some of the newer leaves of our ‘Jack Frost’ are emerging green-coloured with the telltale ‘Langtrees’ spots.
As for ‘Dawson’s White’…it is wanting to revert back to the all-green of Brunnera macrophylla. This is easily controlled by pinching out the green leaves.
And there lies the crux of propagating these variegated cultivars….this reversion tendency. The species form, Brunnera macrophylla, is much easier to propagate with its polite self-seeding.
Hold it. I have just about forgotten poor ‘Mr. Morse’. This was my little treasure find last year. Its name caught my eye as my mom is a huge Inspector Morse fan, plus the added bonus this particular plant has tiny white flowers rather than the usual blue. The only other white-flowered cultivar I know of is ‘Betty Bowring’…one of the parents of mine…who was crossed with – you guessed it – ‘Inspector Morse’, which incidentally, was never released for sale to the public for some reason.
Oh…and the leaves on ‘Mr. Morse’ look exactly like those on ‘Jack Frost’. Hmm, could the other parent of ‘Jack Frost’ possibly be ‘Inspector Morse’? A mystery bearing further investigation….
Leslie Cox co-owns Growing Concern Cottage Garden in Black Creek. Her column appears every second Friday.
