echium pinninana seedlings!!

Wonderful! I hope they ALL thrive - then what a show you'll have next year!

Hard to believe these little seedlings grow into such beautiful giants

Fantastic , beautiful plants

what a great find Sandra and so many of them

They are amazing plants.

Hi Sandra
I have bought some this year which will not flower n-wiil they need protection over winter?
Arlene

Don't you love nature's ways? I wish I had the climate to grow echiums...but alas...I will have to enjoy them from afar...looking forward to your pics next summer!! Congrats, Sandra!

Hi Arlene
i see you live in swansea, if you don't live in a frost pocket i would plant them out as so possible .
they need full sun but more importantly very well drained soil. to increase drainage i dig the hole twice as deep as usual and put in a layer of grit and sand to give the roots extra drainage.

Hi Sandra
we had some bad frosts last year going down to -6.
I had some tender plants in my 4x4 plastic greenhouse over winter and I used to drape a thick layer of fleece inside and zip up the door and everything suvived.
They will get full sun -back garden facing south but I think to be on the safe side they will have to go under cover.
I will have to get along one of these days-keep meaning to go to the nursery that sells the Hellebores.Got about 20 fairly large pots and bought about a dozen different doubles so looking forward to seeing those!
Do you do alpines?
Arlene

i specialise in coastal hardy succulents and shrubs but i also like lots of rockery plants like saxifrage and sedum as they like living here in my garden.
you said you bought a few echiums so maybe you could put some in and some out!!
farmyard nursery in llandielo hold a helibore wekend in the spring. i haven't been but i have heard its very good.

thanks for the info Sandra!
I have two large Belfast sinks which i would like to plant up with alpines etc-will have to get them moved into best position first.
Maybe can get Dtr and husband to have a trip out to see you before the weather totally shuts down!

that would be nice. let me know if you do, as i do gardening for other people in the winter and leave my mother with the nursery. then i can show you the echium seedlings!!

Wow, I am totally unfamilier with this species. In CA we grew the Tower of Jewels E. wildprettii which this somewhat resembles. Pride of Madeira, E.candicans. and of course the weedy E. vulgare. The latter will survive in the Pacific Northwest but not the others.

I think I would have trouble with it up here as well. We sometimes drop into the teens. say 17 degree F.In an exceptional freek arctic outbreak it has gone down to 0 F.
Not a happy time for me.

I also grow many cacti and succulents. Do you have Jovibara or Heufflii. I would recommend them.

Back to the Echium. In Santa Cruz one hospital, landscaped their entire front with E. Madeira. BAD IDEA -- these are super bee magnets and for people coming to the hospital (if they were bee allergic) was like going through a nightmarish gauntlet.

you should have no problem with pininana it is a toughy. we get down to low teens in winter. i dont know jovibara or heuffii. i will look it up.

Sandra, thanks for the comment, " I am so bad with the keyboar my jovibara would be a could typo."

Jovibarba correctly spelled! Sorry.

Here is a nice site that sells them.
http://www.squawmountaingardens.com/product.cfm?CID=13'

I went to their next, as I have some of this stuff.

http://www.squawmountaingardens.com/product.cfm?startrow=11&CID=13

There is much more. Enjoy digging through it. As with Sempervivums, some of the stuff is eh sort of different, but pushing new cultivars out that are more or less similar starts to dimiinish the game. My Cox Orange Pippen better taste different than a Red Delicious apple sort of thing.

Even in my Hardy Fuchsia collection I see some cultivars that I have a hard time telling apart from others.