Wealden Times | WT182 | April 2017 | Gardens supplement inside

WT Garden Supplement
pulmonarias or lungworts. Every garden should have them.
They just seem to get on with it and now come in the most
fantastic forms. They too are best in dappled shade and
most thrive where other plants find conditions difficult.
They are native to Europe and the UK hence their ability
to do well here. They look great with early flowering plants
such as the hellebores and the brunneras. I notice that
the pure white flowers of P. ‘Sissinghurst’ are beginning
to flower now. They come in blues, pinks and red as well
as a combination of colours which change as they mature.
I’m very taken with P. officinalis ‘Blue Mist’ with its large
pale blue flowers and spotted leaves and P. ‘Blue Ensign’
which has rich blue flowers which combine beautifully
with the mauve flowers of its neighbour, a cardamine that
has been dormant all summer, reappearing in March,
the clump spreading out a bit more each year. Some of
the pulmonarias have wonderful long silver leaves like P.
longifolia ‘Majeste’. Another treasure is P. ‘Opal’, again with
silvery leaves and opalescent flowers of the palest blue.
Another group of April lovelies are the epimediums,
also known as Bishop’s Hat and, more appropriately, Fairy
Wings. I think actually that I would have them at the top
of my list of ‘would like lots’. We have the European forms
which are pretty hardy here and then the absolutely gorgeous
Japanese and Chinese forms. They are really fun to collect as
their foliage and their flowers are simply exquisite with the
flowers seemingly floating above the leaves on impossibly
fine stems. The other thing is that many of them are
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