Platycodon Balloon Flower Mixed

The bud is the show. Each one swells into a perfectly inflated balloon, geometric and taut, and holds that shape for days before splitting along its five seams into a wide cupped star of six or seven centimetres. Clear blue, soft pink and white all come on the same planting, from July to September at 60 to 80cm.

It is a slow investment that pays for a very long time. Establishment takes a couple of years, then it improves every season and a plant will sit happily in one spot for ten or fifteen years. Do not plan to move it. It makes a substantial taproot early and hates disturbance, so raise it in deep modules and drop the rootball in intact.

The one thing that loses people their platycodon is spring digging. It emerges very late, often not until May, long after everything around it is up, and a bare patch in April looks like empty ground. Put a permanent label or cane in before the foliage dies down in autumn. If you cut it, the stems bleed a milky sap that seals them and stops them drinking; sear the cut end with a match and the vase life improves enormously.