Growing Delphiniums

For a week or two in early summer, a well-grown delphinium makes the rest of the border look like supporting cast. A plant that spent the winter as a knot of buds at ground level sends up a spike taller than most of the people admiring it, packed with flowers in a blue very few other plants can manage. The catch is that it wants a few things doing at the right moment, and the right moment is usually a few weeks before it looks necessary. This book is about getting those moments right. It follows the order in which the plant asks for things, from choosing and buying, through planting and protecting, to the busy June and July spell when everything happens at once. Each job is explained plainly, with clear steps and the reasons behind them, so you know what to do and why it works wherever you garden. Where growers genuinely disagree, on feeding, on when to stake or how low to cut back, the different views are set out fairly so you can choose for yourself. What you’ll find inside • The main types explained: tall Elatums, Pacific hybrids, branching Belladonnas, New Millennium, compact strains, Delphinium grandiflorum and annual larkspur • Cultivar profiles by colour, separating those that hold the RHS Award of Garden Merit from nursery favourites, plus what the 2023 to 2025 Wisley trial found • Site, soil and drainage, including what to do with heavy clay • Buying good plants and growing from seed, with sowing temperatures and a step-by-step method • Slugs and snails: which methods help, which don’t, and why grit over the crowns in winter earns its place • Staking by twiggy sticks, grids, a cane per spike or netting, with a step-by-step guide to caning a clump • Thinning shoots in spring, deadheading, and cutting back for a second flush of flowers • Pests and diseases,…