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Primula marginata has been doing well growing in limestone chippings in the greenhouse. Writing in volume.1 of the Journal of the Alpine Garden Society, Will Ingwersen says: "This was called by Farrer the best beloved of European Primulas, and he was probably correct. It is one of the besat known, and is exquisite, both in flower and leaf. The plant is curiously rare in nature, occurring abundantly in just a few localities in the Cotian and Maritime Alps and nowhere else. It is best planted in crevices and on ledges in the rock garden, for it has an incurable habit of making each years growth at the end of a woody trunk and loves to hang from some crack into which it can delve deeply with its long, thong-like roots. The leaves are deeply toothed, and heavily powdered with farina, in the best forms with the dentations heavily picked out with golden meal: an enticing sight. The flowers are freely produced, many in a head, and are of the loveliest, pale lavender blue, with a daintily powdered eye. It is an immensely variable plant however, even in Nature, and it is not safe to collect it out of flower, for a magnificent leaf form does not necessarily mean a good flowering form unfortunately, although we grow several forms for the abundant beauty of their foiliage alone. One of the loveliest forms we have for shape size and colour of flower, has a very ordinary leaf. It likes lime, and plenty of it, and if planted firmly and deeply into a crevice or cranny will go on increasing in size and beauty year after year." I bought this one from Pine Cottage Plants in 2014. |
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| 18th April 2015 | ||
