Are lupins worthwhile?

Christopher Lloyd looks at the pros and cons of growing stately lupins in your garden

- Christopher Lloyd

MOST gardeners have an affectionate feeling for lupins. They take us back to our childhood. Their warm but peppery smell is nostalgic. Their plump spikes seem to be asking to be patted with the flat of one’s palm. They are popular with bees, are gay, colourful and, together with oriental poppies, are among the first recognisable heralds of high summer.

Furthermore, lupins flower at a useful time for the average gardener, just after he has had to throw out the spring bedding but before the mainstays of summer have got into their stride.

Why, then, should I ask whether lupins are worthwhile? The answer is because their display lasts for only a fortnight, and that is not very long for a perennial that occupies a good deal of space and then, for the rest of the summer, the plants look more or less a wreck.

You can deadhead lupins and let the old stems carry a few side spikes later on, but they never look up to much and commonly become mildewed as the season progresses.

Alternatively, you can cut the plants to the ground after flowering – undoubtedly the best policy with the aforementioned poppies, but weakening to lupins, which are anyway rather apt to seek excuses for dying on us.

The modern Russell lupin is a fine upstanding plant with bold spikes in a tremendous range of straight or bicoloured shades. But somewhere in its ancestry is the blood of an annual species, and the improved lupins of today are undoubtedly inclined to be short-lived.