Eryngium best variety to grow ?

Hi All

as the summer creeps away slowly .....

Eryngium what would your choice be ?

 

Eryngium x zabelii without a doubt! Beth Chatto sold the original cross many years ago but the cultivar 'Big Blue' seems to be the most widely available now.

 

I don't have enough space here for eryngiums, but if I did I would find a spot for 'Miss Willmott's Ghost', eryngium giganteum.



I love silver plants, and the name is so romantic too! (The legend is that the horticulturalist Ellen Wilmott kept its seeds permanently in her pockets, and scattered them secretly on visits to other people's gardens.)

 

I've never quite understood it's reputation as a prolific self-seeder, Clare. I get the very occasional self-sown plant..only ever one. Perhaps birds eat the seeds and they don't 'process' very well?

 

Interesting, @noisette47 - it did say on the link I gave that the seed-scattering legend was a relatively recent one, and when I checked I found this in a 2022 BBC news story about Ellen Willmott:

But what of Ellen ... secretly scattering the seeds of her namesake plant, Miss Willmott's Ghost?

"Of course it's a myth," says Sandra [Lawrence, her biographer]- and a fairly recent one at that. "It was only in 1980 [in a biography] that we first hear that story about her seed-bombing people's gardens - and it's a very handy one because it works as a really good metaphor for a prickly personality."

Besides, Sandra says she has never been able to get Miss Willmott's Ghost to take seed. "So it's not a very successful plant to seed bomb."

The story of how the plant became associated with Miss Willmott in the first place also remains somewhat of a mystery, says Sandra. "Back in 1966 a garden writer called Graham Stuart Thomas asked in a journal, 'Where did [the name of this plant] come from?' Nobody knew, and he got no replies."

Still a fun name for a striking plant, though - and I enjoyed reading more about Ellen Willmott, clearly quite a character!

 

I think it's really a question of what you want from it, @Spruce! +1 for Hazel's suggestion of 'Big Blue' which is a lovely blue and very striking, you could go for some sharply-toothed, exotic leaves with evergreen E. agavifolium, silvery foliage and no need for staking with biennial E. giganteum 'Silver Ghost' (which self-seeds like a mad thing!) or for sheer pulling power with pollinators E. planum 'Blaukappe'. There's also E. x zabelii 'Neptune's Gold' which has yellow/green foliage and golden-tipped blue flowers, but I'm finding it very slow to form a substantial clump!

Nick

 

I have Neptune Gold which I like and planted Big blue in other gardens also a good doer . I wouldn't mind one called Jade Frost. Quite a few taller one just flop over , even big blue can flop . They is quite array of eryngiums to choice from.

 

That's weird....my E. z. Big Blue doesn't get big enough to flop :-)

 

Different growing conditions

 

thanks everyone I will look into what you have suggested

Spruce