Five years after we first glimpsed this elegant new, ice-white border perennial – we can at last grow it
Back in the summer of 2017,
Adenophora ‘White Blaze’ won the Visitor Vote Award at the prestigious National Plant Show, the annual celebration of plants for commercial growers and garden centres.
It was expected that it would be available in garden centres and by mail order a year or two later, but the plant proved slow to increase.
Rosy Hardy of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants told me: “This was from our own seed of blue-flowered
Adenophora pereskiifolia and this one flowered white”.
“We kept it and produced it from divisions. It was then given to Fairweather’s (a top commercial grower) to see if they could get it produced in more quantity. They were able to propagate it in the lab by tissue culture and once it was in good production we were able to offer it.”
As Rosy describes on the Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants website: “The distinctive spikes of this brand new
Adenophora introduction are packed with pure white, hanging bell-flowers throughout summer.”
Perfect for introducing graceful vertical punctuation to a mixed or herbaceous border, this new twist on a classic cottage garden
perennial is long flowering, easy to grow and hardy.
“An ideal ingredient for a ‘white’ garden, it blends harmoniously with cool tones such as pale pinks and blues. Fairly unfussy, it can cope with any reasonable soil but prefers a sunny to partially-shaded site.”
As can be seen in the picture, the bells of this reliable
campanula relative sometimes develop faint blue tints.
You can order
Adenophora ‘White Blaze’ from
Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants and also from
Crocus.
* Please note, the contents of this blog reflect the views of its author and do not constitute an official endorsement by the RHS.
