My cuttings of the perennial wallflower Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' have rooted. I'm pleased about that, for it is a great plant. Mid purple flowers with the four petals characteristic of the cabbage family keep opening for months at a time on gradually elongating vertical stems, and are hugely attractive to bees and butterflies. The foliage is an agreeable bluish green. But it is not long lived, five years tops on free draining soil, and maybe just the one season on heavy soil or given a cold winter, and the flowers are sterile. I knew that it was propagated from cuttings, and have joked a few times to customers in search of it that while the traditional method of propagation was cuttings, nowadays the usual method of getting more plants seems to be to go to a garden centre.
However, I was a guilty of that as anyone else, and had never previously tried my hand at cuttings. This summer I did, they rooted easily, and today I moved my four new plants into individual pots, reluctant to leave it until our return from holiday given the rate at which the tops were growing. If they now keel over and die then I'll know I should have left them longer before disturbing them. Christopher Lloyd cautioned against pricking out things like hydrangea cuttings in the autumn, saying that it was safer to leave them until the spring when they were naturally starting back into growth, but 'Bowles Mauve' already seemed to be in full growth.
'Bowles Mauve' is named after EA Bowles of Myddleton House, who was born in 1865 and died just a week short of his ninetieth birthday. He was a great and famous gardener, botanist, botanical artist and plant collector, who was awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour, served on fifteen RHS committees, and was a Council member for thirty six years. His wallflower holds the Award of Garden Merit. And yet it may not be so old as I originally assumed it was. Chosen at this year's Chelsea Flower Show to represent plant introductions between 1973 and 1982, it was first exhibited at Chelsea in 1982.
Most of my first batch of Penstemon cuttings rooted as well. Those that failed were nearest to the glass of the greenhouse, caught too much sun, and wilted before they could root despite the protection of a plastic propagating case. I went about making more penstemons quite systematically, buying one each of three varieties I liked in one litre pots, potting them on in the greenhouse into two litre pots to encourage them to grow, and using them as stock plants to provide cuttings. Again, Penstemon are not the longest lived inhabitants of the borders, especially given a cold winter, though those with narrow leaves and slender flowers are hardier than the bigger and blowsier types. Fortunately they are the ones I prefer, and I thought a ready supply of young plants to fill any gaps next year could be handy.
The perennial wallflower and the penstemons were both stuck into normal multi-purpose compost, the penstemons trimmed just below a leaf node and the wallflowers pulled off as side-shoots with a little heel of main stem, all with a tiny dab of hormone rooting powder on their cut ends. I bought the powder fresh this summer, since it is supposed to lose its potency with age, though the manufacturers very annoyingly do not put a best before date on the pot, and so I have no way of knowing if it was actually fresh powder, or if the stock had been sitting around in the garden centre since last year, or even longer.
The Teucrium and Sedum cuttings I took using the same method look hopeful, though I can't yet see any roots through the drainage holes of the pots, and am not going to disturb them yet. I struggled in both cases to find non-flowering shoots to use as cuttings, so simply cut the flowers off. One tray of determined Sedum cuttings made new ones from the leaf axils, which I have removed as well, to try and focus its mind on rooting. I didn't use a plastic case for the Sedum, or my shrubby Salvia cuttings, for fear of them rotting in the moist air.
The Dianthus cuttings are not looking good, despite my best efforts to pull off pipings like I saw on Gardeners World. Perhaps I can't get away with normal multi-purpose for those. Salvia lavandulifolia seems undecided whether to live or not. Pity, I'd like some more, having started with one from the plant centre to see how it went, and because they were expensive, only available in three litre pots at nearly ten pounds a pop. I may not be the only person to experience iffy cuttings, since this year the manager never managed to source any and we didn't stock them. Salvia lavandulifolia has much smaller leaves than the common culinary sage, which smell strongly of lavender when touched.
I was so pleased with my results that I took some more cuttings. They may not root so readily now it is so much cooler, but it seems worth a try, since it's still only the first half of September. I sowed some seeds of Primula florindae out of the bog bed while I was at it, as they seemed ripe and ready, and I had a feeling that primulas were much easier from fresh seed than dried. Last year I left the seed heads to shed their load in situ, but got no primula seedlings at all, and most of my experiments with bought seed of any kind of primrose have drawn a blank, but it's worth a try.
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