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Biennial Flowers

Flowers like purple foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea), rose campion (Lychnis coronaria), and hollyhocks (Alcea rosea) grow from a seed their first year, generally producing a low rosette of leaves. You need to learn to recognize those leaves so you won't pull them out. In their second year biennials send up a flower stalk, bloom, toss their seeds on the ground, and (generally) die. And those foxgloves? If you aren't too obsessive about weeding and don't have 3 inches of bark mulch that prevent seeds from settling into the soil, chances are that in two years you'll have some more foxgloves. It's a 2-year cycle.

Part of the confusion is that biennials often come back year after year because they produce lots of seeds, some of which start new plants in the vicinity of the mother plant. Not only that, not all die after blooming. I have some hollyhock plants that come back every year, even though they are technically biennials.

One theory is that if you pick the flowers before they've had a chance to throw seeds, they live another year to try to produce progeny. The late Dave Talbot, plantsman extraordinaire, once told me that there are some strains of hollyhocks that are perennials, not biennials - even though they are the same species as the biennials.

One of my favorite biennials is the purple foxglove. These plants are tall and stately, with up to 50 blossoms on a strong stem reaching 36 inches on occasion (though more often just 24 inches). The flowers are pink and purple with little spots and dots. The name foxglove actually comes from its German name, which means little folk or fairy gloves - and makes more sense than gloves for foxes.

I don't pick all my foxgloves for cut flowers because I want some to go to seed. I'll wiggle the stem of a foxglove that is done blooming and if it rattles, I know it's ready to drop seeds. I cut a stem and shake out the seeds over places where I would like some plants in two years - either in a flower bed, or at the edge of the woods. Foxgloves do fine in part shade.

I grow perennial foxgloves, too. There is a tall yellow one (Digitalis grandiflora) and a tiny one (D. lutea) that is rich in yellow and brown tones, with little blossoms just half an inch or less. I grow the little ones on the north side of the house, near a row of pines and hemlocks, where they get little light. But they perform nicely, year after year in dry shade.

Rose campion is one of my favorite biennials. It has grey leaves and intense magenta flowers that are about an inch across, each with 4 or 5 petals. I like the contrast between leaf and blossom, and the way the flowers stand up nicely on their own, never flopping in a rainstorm. They stand about 18 to 24 inches tall. And they have a mind of their own, popping up wherever they please, often threading their flower stems through other perennials. Only occasionally seen for sale at plant nurseries, ask for them and perhaps more growers will start them from seed.

And then there are hollyhocks. They produce a flower spike that may reach 6 feet tall, adorned with 2-3 inch wide flowers in a range of pinks, white and reds - and even a deep purple. The blossoms open in sequence over a period of several weeks. Ours are clearly happy here. The seedlings pop up everywhere, including in the vegetable garden. The small ones pull easily, so Karen pots some up as gifts. Everyone likes a free flower.

The problem with hollyhocks is that they take up much more space than the other biennials I've mentioned. A mature hollyhock needs a 2-foot circle of garden space, though our volunteers often get much less. I have (and don't tell Karen, who loves them) learned to weed some out when they are small if there is no space for them.

Only recently did I learn that forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) are considered by most (but not all) experts to be biennials. These tiny blue (or occasionally pink or white) flowers on wispy stems and with small leaves pop up all over my property, from the sunny banks of the brook to full shade in a dry location. I let them do their thing, then weed them out, but still I have literally hundreds of plants each year. They don't bother other plants, accentuating the beauty of tulips when they bloom in masses around them.

There are countless books about perennials, and magazines at the grocery store checkout tout reviews of "the hottest new annuals!" But those poor biennials? They're largely ignored. Do your part, and get some. Just remember that they need to be planted two years in a row if you want to have biennial flowers every year. They'll do the rest.

Henry Homeyer is a gardening coach and the author of 3 gardening books. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. You may reach him at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or at gardening.guy@valley.net.