Foxgloves are truly epic flowers. Trouble-free, shade-loving and self-seeding, they can make any patch of land really rather stylish with really very little effort.
There’s the well-known Digitalis purpurea:
Image copyright Ken Douglas
…and its white form D.purpurea ‘Alba’
Image copyright CaptainTucker
And then there are copious cultivars of D.purpurea:
…such as the white-and-raspberry-jam-patterned ‘Pam’s Choice’…
…or Thompson & Morgan‘s ‘Snowy Mountain’ foxglove.
And then there are the really wonderfully strange foxgloves, like this Digitalis campanulata ‘Alba’.
Digitalis campanulata ‘Alba’. Image copyright The Botanic Nursery
Or Digitalis heywoodii from The Botanic Nursery
And there are also the weird and wonderful hybrids, like Digitalis x mertonensis:
…and this very strange hybrid between D.purpurea and Isoplexis by Thompson & Morgan, known as Digitalis ’Illumination’:
Whatever the type, the cultivation for Digitalis remains the same: shade or part-shade, and any soil, although the more humus-rich and woodland-like the better. Once you’ve planted them, you’ll find they stick with you for better or worse, being prolific self-seeders (although hybrids will not self-seed, being sterile).
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