Growing and Caring for Foxgloves

Towering spires of colorful, cup-shaped blooms, Foxgloves are the skyscrapers of the garden, adding colorful vertical lines to summer designs.

Foxgloves are tall, stately plants that carry purple, yellow, rose or white bell-shaped blooms on long spikes with darker, interior splotches or freckles. The flower stalks grow from a large rosette of leaves.

Foxglove reseeds easily and a single purple plant is capable of producing multi-colored offspring. Most Foxgloves bloom biennially, growing foliage the first year and blooming and dying the second, although some perennial forms are available.

Yellow Foxglove (Digitalis grandiflora) grows just 1 meter tall with creamy yellow flowers that are flecked with brown.

Rusty Foxglove (D. ferruginea) has pale orange-brown blooms on 1.2 meter long stalk, while English Foxglove forms ivory-white, purple, shell-pink, or deep rose flowers dotted with brown or scarlet.

Its sturdy, upright flower-lined spikes make Foxglove a distinctive plant to use as a backdrop for other flowers, among flowering shrubs, or as elegant specimen plants in the summer garden.

In flower borders, plant Foxgloves in the back of the bed with Shasta Daisies or Peonies in the foreground. Perennials that have round flower heads provide stunning contrast to Foxglove's vertical lines.

Among flowering shrubs, foxglove is tall enough to emerge from the crowd and tough enough to compete with larger plants for food and water.

In naturalistic settings, Foxglove is right at home, able to thrive at the base of old stumps and rotting logs. Planted with Ferns along a woodland walk, Foxglove will reseed and bloom in colorful colonies for years.

The best companions for Foxglove are flowers and plants that complement its tall, narrow form and dramatic blooms.

Combine classic cut flowers, such as Sweet William Snapdragons and Roses, with the strawberry-pink Merton Foxglove.

Summer-blooming annuals, such as petunias, Geraniums and Alyssum, thrive in the same soil and share the same bloom time as foxgloves. Combine bright annuals to vibrate against the white blooms of the Foxglove 'Alba'.

Spring bulbs provide bursts of color when the rich pink, rose, purple and white shades of the 'Excelsior Hybrids' are not in bloom. The round clump of the Foxglove's foliage will screen the bulbs; foliage as they yellow and fade.

When planting Foxglove you will need:

• Foxglove plants
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• Compost
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• Mulch
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• Trowel
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• Wire hanger

1. Dig a hole wide enough for the width of the Foxglove plant. Add a heaped trowel full of compost to the hole and mix it into the soil.

2. Set the plant in the hole at the same level it was growing at before. Add soil and firm gently around the roots. Water the new plants in well.

3. Lay a 3cm layer of mulch around the newly planted Foxglove. Fertilize in early in early spring before the plant sends up a flower spike.

4. Support Foxgloves as necessary if they start to show signs of leaning. Protect them from wind if you are expecting a summer storm. To do this, stake tall plants by untwisting a wire hanger, looping the hooked handle around the top of the stem and sticking the other end into the ground.

5. Lay spent flowers stalks on the ground where you want plants to grow so that ripening seeds can fall easily, or break of a capsule of dried seeds and scatter them.

When Foxglove flowers fade, cut the main spike where it emerges from foliage. New spikes will sprout as side shoots.

Buying Hints: Purchase

• Foxglove plants in spring and plant them in the garden while the weather is still cool.

• Buy large Foxglove plants with many leaves. Purchases one-year old plants to ensure they will bloom the year you buy them.

• Avoid pots filled with many young seedlings, as they will need two seasons before blooming.

Sun and Soil requirements:

• Full sun. Foxgloves are very adaptable plants, but will grow straightest if they receive direct sunlight.

• Well-drained, rich soil. Soil enriched with compost will produce the best blooms, but Foxgloves will grow even in poor soils.

Special Advice:

• Foxgloves are said to have a growth-stimulating effect on many nearby plants, particularly Pines.

• Keep children right away from Foxglove plants, as the blooms, foliage and seeds are all extremely poisonous if eaten.

Foxgloves are susceptible to attack from slugs and snails, especially at the seedling stage. Mulch young plants with lucerne straw, which has a texture that these pests do not like to crawl over.