Tiarella wherryi native of the Southern USA produces delicate pink flowers in spring
Southern USA produces clouds of delicate pink flowers in spring, over mounds of evergreen foliage. Both the new forms of tiarellas and x heucherella are proving invaluable as polite ground-cover in dry shade. They both behave: neither running nor seeding about intrusively, but making their own gentle way around their neighbours, respecting their space.
Tiarella ‘Pink Skyrocket’ is one of the highlights of a shady garden in spring. Try planting some of the Japanese Painted Ferns (Athyrium niponicum ‘Pictum’) alongside them if the soil is not too dry. The unfurling crosiers are just the right shade of burgundy before gradually opening their silvered fronds. Combined with drifts of epimediums and clumps of Bowles’ Golden Grass (Milium effusum ‘Aureum’), the whole planting is sensational.
In a cold dry garden the x heucherellas really make an impact in winter with their dense, colourful foliage. One of the easiest is x Heucherella ‘Kimono’. It has pewter-grey, fingered leaves like a Japanese acer, with a dark central star that is more marked in winter. The new introduction, ‘Sweet Tea’ blows hot and cold.
Propagation
(3½in) pots containing a 50:50 mix of horticultural grit and compost.
the pot in spring, harden them off and plant them out.
may not be propagated for sale.
vulnerable to that other garden menace, the Vine Weevil. If you notice a wilting plant that fails to revive when watered, suspect the worst.
Lift it out of the pot and the small, curved, cream larvae will be apparent.
They eat the roots for breakfast, lunch and tea. Robins love them. It’s probably wisest to start the whole pot off again with fresh compost that incorporates vine-weevil killer.
Or you could re-pot them into a John Innes, loam-based compost.
Wash the roots well first, however, or the microscopic eggs will merely hatch in their new home.
Tiarella ‘Pink Skyrocket’ - one of the highlights of a shady garden in spring
In full shade it’s the colour of a refined cup of ‘Earl Grey’. But with a little sun on its back it becomes a dark, well- stewed mug of ‘builders’ brew’. The flowers are white and frothy like those of its heuchera parent, and these add laciness to any planting.
Providing they are growing in the right conditions, heucheras are easy and rarely troubled too much by the dreaded molluscs. But in a pot, especially, they are
A wonderful bronze grass, Carex buchananii Country Gardener 13
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