Not very good with heathers - help please

I do pride myself on being a good gardener on the whole I get success but heathers have always been an exception, even though I have always used errecacous compost. I planted six last year and one survives and its hardly grow at all. They are not in boggy ground.
My wife loves the plants and we have an ideal location to plant a group of five or six plants.
I live in St Albans which has a London type soil its a clay loam with plenty of stones.
I want to try again but I am bewildered by the varieties.

My criteria a

Must be soil tolerant (I will use erracacous compost, but I dont want it to die later on)

Must be fast growing - I am too old for anything else

Must form large bushes, wider the better, hopefully about 12 to 15 inches high.
Colour is not so critical purple would be fine, but maybe a variety of colours.


Given these criteria, I have three questions please

1] What varieties?

2] Where to get proper (not measly) specimins via the net

3] If there are any planting tips appart from using correct compost and free draining then i would be grateful to know


If you know the answer to any of htese questions I would love to hear from you

thanks

ZeroZero

 

Sadly, I can't help with your heather problem, one thing you can be pretty sure of - someone here will know.

No matter how hard you try or what you do, I believe there are some plants which just 'hate' us and refuse to grow. With me it's mint - while everyone else complains about the wretched stuff taking over, I've tried growing mint every year, in every garden we've had since we were first married (in 1978) and every year, without fail, it's died. One of my life's ambitions ... to have sufficient mint to complain about!

 

Calcium raises pH, thus making the ground more alkaline. Not so good for ericaceous plants.

I don't know much about heather, but I grew up on the edge of the moors so have seen a lot of it

The moors don't really dry out, even in drought spells. Sure the surface of exposed soil dries a bit, but it is generally moist just below the surface, and positively wet for much of the year.

Drifting off slightly, when I was a bit younger, one of my favourite mountain bike trails came down off a peak on the moors, winding down to a reservoir. It was officially a bridleway (so bikes are allowed) but it was totally neglected and it seemed I was the only one that used it. It was a good fast trail, and required a bit of skill. Technically it required more skill than I had, so I came off a few times, and bust my bike once or twice. There was one sharp bend that always got me. I would always know it was coming, and I'd always think 'this time I'm going to stay on', but I'd always get launched. The nature of the bend and the angle and speed I always hit it at meant I'd be launch a good few feet through the air, and the bike would go off at an angle, so no danger of me landing on it (which hurts). I was always very thankful that the heather was there, because it forms such a dense cushion that it just doesn't hurt when you land on it, which is why I always hit that particular bend as fast as I could.