Fuchsia round-up 1: Bland's New Stripe, Angie and Eva Boerg

Last month I wrote a little post saying that I was throwing out all my thirty-odd varieties of fuchsias, but rather than let all my experiences of growing these little beauties go to waste I will be doing several of these fuchsia round-up posts over the next few weeks.  Just because I am moving on to pastures new doesn't mean others don't want to grow them.  Hopefully if you read this so you will be a little more prepared on what you are getting.  I have found many times that i have bought a variety to discover it looks nothing like what I thought it would when it finally blooms.  I had really hoped to be able to have  a picture of each variety but some of mine really gave pathetic shows this year and I didn't manage to catch some of them.  One of the inevitable problems of buying plants on the internet I guess, I always think the blooms are going to be nice and big and turn out to be really unimpressive.  So here we go with the first three varieties:

Bland's New Stripe- An original member of the team from the first year I properly got into fuchsias.  Unfortunately I bought it at time when I would buy virtually anything under the 'fuchsia' umbrella, as this really isn't my cup of tea at all.  Its predominantly the traditional red and purple colours of hardy fuchsias that I don't particularly like, apart from some streaking on the purple of baby pink.  Probably this is because it is actually a hardy variety where as I normally only buy non-hardy types.  Largely I found that my plant resembled pictures I have seen on the web, although I have seen the red sepals tightly curled up and away from the purple where as mine generally just stood up straight on end like they had experienced a terrible fright.  Average sized, roughly two inches long not counting the stamens, there is no frill or excitement of any kind.  If I may be so brash as to say; I find it boring.  I really don't know what came over me when I bought it.  If you wanted a hardy fuchsia for the garden that is a little different, this may be a good one.

Bland's New Stripe- The baby pink streaking down the purple petals is where the 'stripe' element comes from I guess,
other than than its much like a regular hardy fuchsia.  I didn't do an 'up the skirt' shot of this one as there is not much to look at

Angie- Ah little Angie.  This I would probably describe as a real do-er, it was the first one out last year and flowered continuously for months.  Described as a 'bush' variety they aren't wrong.  There is no spreading or trailing, no long unruly shoots.  Angie is most definitely a bush, and an extremely small one at that.  Everything about Angie is miniature, she only grew about 8 inches tall, the leaves are tiny and the flowers are only about an inch long and less than an inch wide.  But in her favour this tiny bush was always covered in blooms but like all good reliable do-ers, Angie is a little underwhelming.  Her purple and white with the merest splash of red doesn't exactly set me alight and she is so small she doesn't have the presence to make a statement across the patio.  But for reliable flowering that won't get out of hand, she's your girl.  Unfortunately Angie never managed to get her picture taken, poor girl.

Eva Boerg- I think.  Most of the labels wore off so its not 100% definite but this seems the most likely candidate

Eva Boerg- Another purple and white variety, and again unfortunately in my opinion, not the most exciting.  When I bought it as a plug plant the image on the packet showed a really dark plumy purple but as I have regularly found when the fuchsias actually come out, the colour of my plant was a little different.  More like a mid pinky purple it is pretty, but still not what I thought I was going to get.  While you might be thinking you've clearly just identified the wrong fuchsia as Eva from the pictures, I remember thinking this when she first flowered.   Eva is what is known as a 'single' flower so is fairly small with no frills.  Like I said, its quite pretty with faintly blushed pink sepals and is my favourite of the three featured here.

The 'up the skirt' shot, fairly open petals, overall 'nice'