Heuchera 'Berry Smoothie'
20th May 2012
Heuchera breeding has progressed in a series of pulses of excitement. During the 1960's and 1970's Alan Bloom bred a series of new cultivars based on H.sanguinea
that had green leaves and scarlet flowers. They were good plants but they tend to be short lived and as vine weevil
became more of a problem, they tended to get eaten (vine weevil love the Saxifragaceae above almost anything else).
Then in the 1980's H. 'Palace Purple' appeared and breeders moved to the production of cultivars with strong leaf colours. Purple leaved hybrids were followed
by yellow leaved hybrids, the two were combined to give scarlet. They were all crossed with Tiarella
and now we have a legion of new plants in every colour and leaf shape imaginable. You can't have missed them, they are everywhere.
It is perhaps surprising that they are so rarely seen performing well in gardens. The problem is that they still
tend to be short lived and still get eaten by vine weevil.
I have avoided the new ones for some time because I know the problems but a couple of years ago I decided to plant a few as a trial
and see if anything genuinely worthwhile had been produced.
'Berry Smoothie' was bred by Janet Egger and released in 2010. I planted a young one, and it grew well in the first year,
resisted rabbit attack for a while and was moderately good looking in 2011 but past its best the following year.
I have enjoyed it but I don't feel the need to rush out and rescue it.