Natural selection

At Twelve Nunns Nursery in Lincolnshire, it has taken 20 years for three new erythroniums to be offered for sale

-  ALYS FOWLER

Breeding is a dedicated game, that much is a given: you need to know your plants, be able to spot the vigour here, the variation over there; the mottled leaf or a dainty tilt of a head, then there's the record keeping and the space required for all those little babies to become the ones that stand out. On top of this is the time it takes. To give some perspective to this, the breeding programme at Twelve Nunns Nursery spans two generations and has taken more than 20 years of careful, meticulous selection to create a three new Harvington erythroniums. And now that Harvington trio is finally ready to meet the world.

Twelve Nunns Nursery, based in Lincolnshire, is known for delightful woodlanders: the Harvington Hellebores, interesting anemones and delicate narcissus, trilliums that wow and rare roscoeas. It is owned by Penny Dawson, whose parents, Hugh and Liz Nunn, ran a much-admired nursery in the village of Harvington between 1985 and 2015. "That's where all the breeding started, explains Penny.

Penny's parents retired around the time she was starting up her own nursery and so it made sense to transfer over the breeding stock to her. "I asked my dad why exactly he started growing erythroniums and he said, 'They've got everything: grace, poise and charm. That, and their rarity value, makes them compelling to grow," says Penny. And just like that, the compulsion to create something wonderful is inherited from one generation to the next.