Bronze Fennel

A haze of smoky purple-bronze at 1.2 to 1.5m, the foliage so finely divided that from a few paces it reads as coloured mist rather than a plant. Flat mustard-yellow umbels top it in late summer. As a piece of structure in a border there is very little that does more work for less effort.

It is a hardy perennial and every part of it is useful. The leaves taste sweetly of aniseed and go with fish; the seeds are the fennel seed you buy as a spice; the umbels bring in hoverflies and parasitic wasps in real numbers, which is the reason to have it near the vegetables.

Now the warning. It self-seeds enthusiastically, and it makes a deep taproot that is hard work to dig out once established. Left to its own devices you will be pulling seedlings out of the gravel for years. Cut the heads off before the seed ripens if you want to stay in control, and site it where you are content for it to stay. It also crosses with culinary fennel, so do not expect a bronze plant from a seedling if a green one is growing nearby.