Buying and Planting Aquilegias: Touchwood Aquilegias

The aquilegia currently self-seeding itself around the damp patch in my
garden; very pretty pale pink, but a devil beneath ground.

There are many things I hate about aquilegia, mainly revolving around their shocking ability to reproduce.  Talk about fertile, I swear wherever these seeds fall they grow.  Despite being an annual, as far as Im concerned once you have them that's it your stuck with them for life.  This is because aquilegia have some of the biggest and strongest roots ever.  They may be all dainty on top but underneath they have the dirtiest great roots.  I have heaved and sweated and sworn like a trooper and still they will not be freed from their soily foothold.  So best not to plant them.

However, there are also many things I like about aquilegia, such as there incredible structure.  Really as flowers go they are rather incredible, and they will also grow in the dark damp part of our garden where very little else is willing.  These two facts together almost make up for the roots, almost.

This picture really shows off their structure well with the five petals leading back to the long spurs at the back, as shown on the far left.  There's a lot going on in this little flower.

Despite their incredible structural composition, and yes I do think this is a plant worthy of such a phrase, I refused to be won over until one week on Gardener's World (a weekly gardening show in the UK) they featured the UK's national aquilegia collection.  The plants in that lady's collection were simply incredible.  She had singles of every colour, and doubles with frills and layers and constructions you would think were impossible in a flower without the assistance of ground plans and scaffolding.

So impressed by her display was I that when at Hampton Court flower show last year I stumbled across a packet of aquilegia 'Pom-poms', I bought them without a second thought.  The name implies frills and layers galore and I am all over that.  I planned on getting round the problem of its spreadability by growing them in pots.  I don't know if thats recommended, but since one seed found its way in with a fuchsia last year and grew more than happily, I know they can.

I had forgotten until I came back across the picture how interesting the seed heads are, holding all those troublesome little seeds.  I think they look like little jester hats, probably because I only saw one in a film the other day

When I decided to completely chuck my entire fuchsia collection at the end of last year a whole lot of pot space suddenly became available and my thoughts turned to what to fill this new space with.  My mind wandered back to that national collection.  Turns out the lady - Carrie Thomas - has a website called Touchwoodplants where she sells a variety of seeds, and of course aquilegia seeds from her collection.  While the site's graphics burn my ex-designer's eyes, the sheer number of possible varieties to buy is just unbelievable - we are talking like 500 varieties here!

Of course I had to have some, so emailed Carrie with a list of 6 to check availability at like 9 on a Friday night and received a response within the hour.  That lady is on it!  I wanted them all but bought Touchwoods Dreamtime, white double 2553, Black and Brownies - mix, Denim and Ice - mix, fancies - mix, and marbled blue 1246.  I went for quite a few mixed packets because then there is more chance of a nice bit of variety.  I don't think there's much point getting too precious about what they will flower like because they all cross pollinate.  The seeds were with me in like three days, I can not recommend Touchwoodplants enough for service!

I think the packaging is really sweet- little envelopes made of almost like baking parchment type paper with little sticky labels holding them shut.  Sweet but fiddly when fingers are cold.

So to planting.  On her website Carrie says bung them in whenever really after Christmas.  So to get ahead of the game I started sowing last weekend.  I put between 6-9 seeds of each variety in quite small individual pots, small because Carrie says they need transplanting on early before those monstrous roots appear.

Planting these seeds really questioned my love of gardening.  There I was, crouched, freezing with numb fingers trying to fiddle with delicate packaging and miniature seeds.  I believe the seeds prefer to be dusted with a little soil, but my soil was too damp to be dusted so I just left that part out.

Depending on how well they germinate I might plant more as I have plenty of seeds left, theoretically you get 25 of each but I think there's a few more there myself.  How she counts them out I don't know but if she wants to maintain her eyesight she should not worry about being so precise!