Sneaky Pulmonaria

Friday night is for armchair gardening and Doc and I have watched Gardeners World on BBC2 for decades.  It is comforting to watch other people work hard whilst we soothe away our aching limbs with a (purely medicinal) cool beer.  And if we are ever in need of inspiration, Monty Don and the team are there to give good, solid advice.

Last Friday (20th April) Carol Klein introduced us to the native lungwort, or pulmonaria, which grows in woodlands and verges.  She also met a lady who has been growing them in her Hampshire garden for over 15 years.

When Doc and I saw how easy and practical it is to grow this perennial, we wondered how we had not come across this delightful plant before.  They are one of the first spring flowering perennials to appear.  The clusters of nodding blue, pink, white, red, coral or mauve flowers attract bees and stand out well against the leaves. There are many different varieties and it is not just the flowers that are so interesting.  Some have plain green leaves, some are splattered with white and some have silver spots - hence the name ‘lungwort’, symbolising diseased lungs.  (For this reason, Doc discovered, the leaves were once used to treat pulmonary infections.)



 

These valuable plants make good trouble-free ground cover for moist shade, sitting modestly alongside the spring bulbs and hellebores. They can handle full sun too and if the leaves of taller, summer perennials provide shade for them later in the season, they are not prone to mildew.  They form manageable clumps, spread slowly and need little care.  Usefully, they can be propagated by division or by taking root cuttings.

Doc and I agreed that pulmonaria should go to the top of the gardening shopping list.  However, on Saturday, when I was (sadly) taking the remains of a very old, dead, climbing rose down to the bonfire heap at the bottom on the garden, I noticed some pink and blue flowers peeping out of the centre of the triangle of plants in the corner, by the beech hedge.  This area was where we used to take unidentifiable plants until we found out what they were and I am ashamed to say that we sort of forgot them.  The ‘nursery bed’ soon became overgrown with grass and weeds and hardy geraniums.

Having just seen the pulmonaria on Gardeners World I was sure I was looking at the very same plant and with a some more research, I think I have identified the plant as pulmonaria officinalis. There are characteristic coarse leaves of this old cottage plant and its flowers are simultaneously blue and pink which is really striking.  Apparently, this plant does well in grass.....

So, although it is best to divide the plant in the autumn, I decided to rescue half of the clump immediately.  I dug up a large chunk, split it and now we have half a dozen new plants sitting in the cold frame.  In less than 24 hours, I lost one plant and found a new one. Thank you Gardeners World.   Where would we gardeners be without you?