With boldly coloured, nectar-rich flowers that are loved by pollinators, and striking foliage, these statuesque plants will add a touch of true drama to any planting scheme
WORDS ANDREW GLADMAN PHOTOGRAPHS JASON INGRAM
Among the wealth of perennials available to the gardener today, few match the drama of globe thistles. They are known for their true-blue, spherical inflorescences, each of which starts life as small grey-green mace-like globe, before individual blue flowers open from the top of the sphere down. Echinops are at their best planted en masse, creating veritable oceans of suspended blue spheres bobbing gracefully in the breeze. Bees and other pollinators are equally enticed by globe thistles, with the compound inflorescences among the most abundant and frequently replenished sources of nectar available. Unoccupied globes are therefore a rare sight on a summer’s day, ensuring borders hum approvingly.
Few perennials can compete with globe thistles for drought tolerance. Once established, they require no additional watering – even in sweltering droughts as other perennials wilt and wither away. Globe thistles combine this drought tolerance with complete hardiness, continuing to grow well in cold, wet conditions and surviving unscathed in even the coldest of UK winters before emerging anew each spring.
A classic position is in dry gardens and what I would term ‘scrubland’ gardens. In a sparse setting against a backdrop of shrubs such as buddlejas and brooms, globe thistles can be used to great effect as structural punctuation throughout the planting scheme. In spring, their finely cut foliage provides a pleasing foil to architectural sea hollies, euphorbias and sedums, before taking centre stage in summer, flooding the garden with blue.
As vigorous clump-forming perennials, Echinops will make excellent additions to any perennial border – even in tightly packed cottage gardens, where they sit gracefully alongside delphiniums, hollyhocks and foxgloves. For the cottage gardener, the globes of Echinops are also wonderful as cut flowers.
The growth of globe thistles means they are well suited to prairie plantings, too. Set among a backdrop of rustling Calamagrostis and Miscanthus, the spires of thistle-like foliage produced by Echinops provide pleasing visual contrast. Their blue inflorescences
