Canterbury Bells Crown Single Mixed

Tall spires crowded with big open bells, five to eight centimetres across, in deep purple-blue, pink, white and clear lilac. It has been in British gardens for the best part of five hundred years and it is one of the few flowers that genuinely deserves the word stately.

This is a biennial, so nothing happens in the first year. You sow it one summer, it makes a sturdy leafy rosette and sits there, it overwinters, and it flowers the following May to July. Anyone expecting flowers the season they sow will be disappointed. The way round it is to sow a short row every year so there is always a crop coming, which is how these were grown when every cottage had them.

The wait buys you something no annual matches. The bells are substantial enough to have real presence in a vase, they last well cut, and bumblebees crawl bodily inside them, which is worth watching on its own. At 60 to 80cm the spires want a spot with some shelter. A wet windy June will lean them over, and once a flowering stem goes down it does not come back up.