Like tiny pieces of bright blue sky dropped into your garden, forget-me-nots are one of the few true-blue flowers available to gardeners.These plants are steeped in history and symbolism, and are eas
06.06.2023 - 18:40 / gardenerspath.com / Sylvia Dekker
How to Grow and Care for English Bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scriptaEnglish or common bluebells are the flowering perennial bulbs you can find carpeting woodlands with layers of blue in Europe in the springtime. They’re steeped in folklore and history.
These classic spring bloomers are suitable for cultivation in USDA Hardiness Zones 5 to 8, and will transform any shady garden into a sea of sky-rivalling color.
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In this guide, we’ll talk about everything you need to successfully grow this beautiful, quaint plant in your garden.
Here’s what I’ll cover:
Cultivation and HistoryHyacinthoides non-scripta, also known as English or common bluebell, fairy flower, harebell, bell bottle, crow leek, or wild hyacinth, is native to western Europe.
In some places the botanical name is still listed as Scilla campanulata, S. nutans, or Endymion non-scripta.
Although they look similar, English and Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) are different plants. English types have cream-colored anthers, not blue ones like the Spanish variety.
The bell-shaped blooms are fragrant, they all hang to one side of the stem, and the flower spikes (racemes) droop. The English species is also shorter and smaller overall than the Spanish type.
English and Spanish plants will hybridize if located near each other, resulting in what’s known botanically as H. x massartiana. This is just one of the reasons true English bluebells are threatened, and thus protected in the UK.
Over half of the world’s bluebells grow in the UK, namely in old British woods.
If you find an area thickly carpeted with these flowers, you may be standing in a 400-year-old
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