Like a breath of fresh air in the summer shade garden, this cold hardy perennial delights with its crisp, clean looking white and green striped foliage and pretty china-blue flowers. It’s not a plant for dry shade, but if you have good soil beneath trees which caste dappled shade, as many deciduous trees do, this becomes a must-have plant. Its colouring is especially appealing when seen against a dark, shadowy background.
There are lots of very handsome plants which like shady conditions and are superb to grow with Polemonium ‘Brise d’Anjou’. Ferns are among them and it pays to remember that it’s not just native ferns which are readily available as some exceptional, cold hardy, northern hemisphere varieties have found their way into garden centres in recent years. Outstanding among these are the Athyrium varieties ‘Silver Falls’ and ‘Ursula’s Red’ which have silvery fronds which grow horizontally just above ground level. They are deciduous, but that disadvantage is made up for by the fresh beauty of the fronds from spring until late autumn. Make shade fascinating by growing them in the foreground of Polemonium ‘Brise d’Anjou’ along with cream and green foliage Pulmonarias (which have their sky blue flowers in spring) blue-grey or yellow foliage Hostas, snowdrops, Liriopes and, as a background, native renga renga, Arthropodium cirratum ‘Matapouri Bay’, which has bold green foliage and long stemmed sprays of creamy-white flowers in summer. If you are blessed with white trunked birches, such as the ghostly white Betula jacquemontii, the cream and white of ‘Brise d’Anjou’ is a superb complement.
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Schemes & Themes
using Liddle Wonder Plants