There’s a new National Collection of Penstemon in Gloucestershire. I’ve been out to take a look.
Richard Marshall never intended to start a National Plant Collection. It was only when he started going through what was in his Cotswold garden that he realised that not only did he have a lot of different penstemon varieties, many were quite unusual.
He’d originally approached Plant Heritage, the charity that runs the National Plant Collections, to ask about their plant guardian scheme. This spreads plants that are rare in cultivation among different growers via a plant exchange in order to safeguard them. Richard knew he had many, such as phlox, that are deemed ‘threatened’ because there are no suppliers and he was keen to make sure they weren’t lost for future gardeners. However, the penstemon came as a surprise.
“I was seeing what was rare because you don’t put a plant forward unless you know it’s got only a certain number of suppliers listed,” he says. “There were an awful lot that were including a large percentage of the penstemon.”
Unlike many National Collections, rather than being in a separate area the penstemon are grown among other plants in the garden near Cheltenham that he and his wife, Gill, have created over the past 29 years.
Seeing the penstemon mixed with phlox, hemerocallis, geraniums and roses, gives the collection a more natural feel and offers some good ideas for planting combinations.
The colours range from scarlet through pinks and purples to white. ‘Lilac and Burgundy’ has beautiful markings on its petals, ‘Evelyn’ has elegantly slender flowers, while ‘Rubicundus’ has the eye-catching contrast of red flowers with a pure white throat.
Richard grows the penstemon with chicken wire buried just under the soil around the base of the plant to thwart squirrels who dig down to bury nuts.
“The one thing penstemon really hate, particularly in autumn, is having their roots disturbed.”
He propagates through cuttings, taking them in autumn and even the winter, which he’s found to be more successful than in spring.
Like many gardeners, he suffered a lot of losses over the cold winter with around three quarters of those in the ground succumbing to the cold. Luckily, he had stock plants and these along with cuttings means he’s missing just one of those he originally had.
Richard’s limited his National Collection to cultivars from pre-1998 primarily, he explains, because they are easier to research thanks to a definitive book that was published in that year. Even so, there are numerous examples of plants being sold under the wrong name – “One of the problems with penstemon is there’s a lot of mislabelling of plants.”
As a result, his collection is currently around 80 with another 20 plants that he is still researching to ensure they are correctly named.
Even though there are many more that have been listed for sale in the past, Richard estimates that there are probably only another 30 to collect: “The bottom line is how many are actually still existing and how can they be proved to be what they say they are.”
It looks as though there’s a lot more research still to be done.
You can find out more information about Plant Heritage and the National Plant Collections on the website.
You can read about more of my garden visits here.
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