This week...Aquilegias

Try easy-to-grow aquilegias for a rainbow of spring colour

- GRAHAM RICE

AQUILEGIAS, also known as columbines or granny's bonnets, are distinctive perennial flowers. They bloom in late spring and summer, but most live for only a few years before fading away. They are, however, very easy to grow from seed.

Aquilegias are one of those few flowers that come in a literal rainbow of colours. There is even one with chocolate-coloured flowers. In many varieties the flowers bring together contrasting colours for a dazzling look. Aquilegias are also visited by bees and other pollinating insects.

Typical aquilegia flowers have five flat outer petals. These petals surround five more rounded petals that make up the skirt, and which each have a slender tube at the base that contains the nectar and protrudes upwards between the outer petals. The flowers are usually nodding. Modern varieties often have variations on this look. They are generally easier to recognise than to describe!

The flowers are carried on stiff upright branched stems in late spring or early summer, growing through very attractive mounds of green or greyishgreen foliage divided into nine, or sometimes more, rounded leaflets.

Beth Chatto, garden writer and expert gardener, wrote: "Aquilegias are excellent and easy garden plants, with a variety of colours and forms to suit any open situation. They will also grow in part-shade."

How to buy

AQUILEGIAS, also known as granny's bonnets due to the bonnet-like blooms, are available either as seed, as young plants or as plants that are already in flower.

Seeds are available from garden centres and mail-order suppliers. Your plants will usually flower a year after you sow the seeds. They are easy to raise, so this is the most economical approach.

Young plants are available by mail order, while larger plants, in flower, are often available from garden centres.

Three kinds of aquilegias