Aquilegia Nora Barlow

Raspberry-pink pompoms with each petal tipped in white and a touch of green, fully double and spurless, on branched stems in May and June. It is the most famous of the Barlows and the one people usually mean when they say they want a double aquilegia.

The colour does not hold still. A bloom opens deep raspberry, fades through pale pink washed with green, and finishes close to white, so a single established plant carries the whole gradient at once and a vase of it looks like three different flowers. That shifting quality is the appeal, and it is worth knowing it will never give you a uniform block of pink.

It carries some history with it. The variety is named for Emma Nora Barlow, Charles Darwin's granddaughter, who grew it in her Cambridgeshire garden. It is hardy well below anything Norfolk produces and happiest in dappled shade. As with every aquilegia the foliage collapses into mildew by late July, and cutting the plant hard to the ground is the answer rather than the last resort. Seedlings will not come true.