If your garden needs a little height, there’s no better plant to grow than foxgloves. These striking and colourful plants can grow to over 1 metre tall and look fantastic in most gardens.
In addition to their height, foxgloves are known for the striking and attractive bell-shaped flowers they produce in clusters at the top of their long stems.
At Awapuni we stock foxgloves in a range of vibrant colours including lavender, cream, apricot, white and purple. Plus, we also sell a mixed bundle of seedlings.
If you’d like to complement your foxgloves with other tall-growing flowers, I recommend grabbing some delphinium, lupin and hollyhock seedlings. Grown together, these four will create a lovely cottage garden effect.
Once you've got your seedlings you need to find a good spot to plant. Foxgloves will grow most places but they grow best in semi-shade with moist soil that is not prone to frost.
Remember foxgloves are very toxic. The whole plant, including seeds, leaves and roots is poisonous. So make sure to wear gloves when planting or caring for them. And if you have young children around (with a tendency to put things and hands in their mouths) I suggest thinking carefully about where you plant them.
Once you’ve found the right place, dig in a bit of compost before you plant. They like a nutrient rich soil so this will help give them a good start.
As you would expect from plants with a bit of height it's important not to grow each seedling too close together - around 35cm apart is ideal.
If you plant our established foxgloves (our established plants are plants that have had extra months growing at the nursery so they fast-forward the pleasure you will receive from each plant) you can expect to see them flower in around two months. If you decide to grow foxglove seedlings you can look forward to them flowering in around three to four months.
For a longer flowering season, dead head (i.e. remove the dead flowers) before the last blooms open. This will encourage the plants to flower again. This will also stop the flowers going to seed if you don’t want to extend your display of foxglove flowers for next year.
