Lilac Ladies Delphinium

That's so cool - such a wonderful display

looking at your pic~ an old passion is igniting! such lovely things~ tall and beautiful. Can you grow Echium pininata there?

Hi Lori. Not sure about the Echium pininata. I would have to look in the online nurseries in NZ & see if I can find it somewhere. The small privately-owned nurseries which sell mail-order, have a lot of different plants that the commercial big GCs don't have. I know we can grow Echium Fastuosuna here, & will be getting a couple for my garden when I have a bigger garden bed dug out. Would this be similar?

The pininana is sometimes called tree echium...they resemble the fatuosum but it would appear that the flowers are a slightly different shade of blue and a little larger on the fatuosum. The plants are extremely tall and very architectural! and they are true perennials...quite long lived once happily established...(or so I've read) lol. I have a type of wild echium here...it is an early summer wildflower and it is a wonderful blue. It grows on the most sandy depleted looking soil you ever saw...so it should be happy in the beds I'm digging in the front.

Hi Lori. From the description you give above, I think I had those growing in the garden of a house I owned in 2000. It was a terraced garden of over an acre & a large area in one corner in full sun, was filled with plants which had very thick tall spires covered in tiny blue/purple flowers. I remember another big plant nearby was known as Bearpaws ... those flowers were white & mauve on a very tall spire.

It took me a few years gardening to appreciate the "native" species. It's almost effortless to grow them and they put on such a lovely show. I'm interested in what you grow in Nz...or what your "native" species are. Are you on the North or South Island? Sad to admit that even tho NZ is a fellow commonwealth member, I don't have a clear picture of what your climate is like...studied your geography in school, but that's not always a good picture of a place.