Plant description and mail order for Pulmonaria Blue Ensign

Pulmonaria Blue Ensign, such a long time since we have had Pulmonaries in the garden.

It was only on a visit to Crathes gardens a couple of years ago in the month of April that made me decide to reintroduce these little beauties to our garden once again.

I guess I wasn’t so fond, seeing them perform well in Spring and then in mid Summer the foliage would virtually disappear either through mildew, or perhaps it can just be the habit of this plant

The first one in bloom in our garden for some years is Blue Ensign.

I planted a couple of them in the east facing border in the back garden, these pictures were taken a few days ago.

As expected the foliage did die back completely in mid Summer last year, however I was delighted to see the emerging leaves in the second week of March this year. The dreadful early Spring held flowering back a couple of weeks.

Blue Ensign is a hardy perennial and generally seen as one of the best blue varieties available, the plain green leaves are unlike so many of the other Pulmonaries which have cream or silver splashes /spots on the leaves.

Pulmonarias also known as Lungwort, they perform best of all in partial shade or even full shade and are also not fussy about soil type as long as its free draining. As I was saying the leaves often die back in Summer, fear not the plant is not dead.

Hardiness – Fully hardy

Position – Part or full shade

Height – 30cm

*** Pulmonaria blue ensign ***

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Another Pulmonaria to consider is (Opal) I don’t have this one as yet, however I am sure to find it soon.

The pictures below were taken on my visit to Crathes gardens.

The flowers of this herbaceous perennial are the palest of blue, almost white in fact. For those who like the marble effect leaves then Opal with silvery white spots is for you.

Keep these plants well watered in Summer to help prevent the powdery mildew which is often associated with Pulmonaria.

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This one below was also photographed at Crathes, it has the purest of white flowers and plain green leaves. There was no label on this one.

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A few pleasant days and the garden is coming to life, here we have a few plants which decided to give us a show in the last week of April.

The Biennial Bellis is probably not a plant most of us would rave about, however Habanera is in a class of its own and I will talk about it on another occasion.

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Hellebores started blooming mid February, only a little later than usual, however they have been in flower for more than two months and looking at their very best in April.