Aquilegia question

Have you tried just chucking the seed around the garden rather than giving them the full seed-tray routine? Some plants are just perverse like that. I can never get them to grow properly if I'm trying.

You could leave your purple ones to set seed and see if you get anything different next year. Aquilegias are very promiscuous (or so the garden books, rather primly, say) so may have been playing away with next door's pink ones.

If all else fails, would you like me to send you fresh seed of my mongrels when they ripen?

 

To be honest, just about everything else. On a north facing windy corner I've got a 19 year old wisteria that's never been pruned (apart from to 'tidy it up') and which is currently smothered in blossom: dicentra which sits happily in full sun: an azalea that never disappoints, pieris and against the odds, an Astilbe chinensis - the last 3 were gifts. When buying plants I usually look for those which want the condiitions I know I can offer, so tend to go for things like centranthus, pyrethrum, malva etc., but I can't honestly say that anything really 'fails' as such.