The winter aconite is the first of the spring flowers to open in most British gardens, and it is also the one most likely to disappoint you in its first year. Both of those facts have the same cause, and it is worth knowing before a single tuber goes in.
Why Do Winter Aconites Fail To Come Up
Because the tuber went in dry. Aconites arrive as small brown knuckles that look lifeless and are sometimes not far off it, and of everything we send out in the autumn they are the least forgiving of a long spell out of the ground. A pack that never appears is usually not a planting mistake at all. It is a tuber that lost too much water somewhere between being lifted and reaching your border.
Should You Soak The Tubers Before Planting
Yes, and it is the one thing most likely to change the outcome. Give them three or four hours in tepid water before they go in and you can watch them take up water and firm out. Overnight does no harm either, and a full day is the most we would ever leave them. What does harm them is being left for days, because a tuber sitting in water that long rots rather than swells.
What Is The Difference Between Hyemalis And Cilicica
Timing and size. Hyemalis is the common winter aconite, out in January in a mild year and standing about 10cm. Cilicica follows a little later, carries a noticeably larger flower and has bronze tinted foliage, so a few of each will stretch the show by two or three weeks at no extra trouble.
The common winter aconite, out in January.
Later, larger flowered, with bronze tinted leaves.
Where Do Winter Aconites Want To Be
Under deciduous trees and shrubs. They do their whole year before the canopy above them is in leaf, so the shade that would finish most plants is the very thing they are built for, and the leaf litter that gathers under a tree is close to what they grow in wild. What they will not take is ground that bakes dry in summer. Four centimetres deep is plenty. Plant them closer together than feels right.
Will They Spread On Their Own
They will, by seed rather than by the clump, which is why they ask for patience. The first spring after planting often looks thin. Leave the seedheads where they are, keep a fork out of the ground, and by the third or fourth year they begin to run, thickening every season afterwards without being asked.
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What To Plant With Them
Snowdrops first, because they want the same ground and the same weeks, and the two of them together are the classic late winter picture in a British garden. Winter flowering crocus follow a fortnight behind, and chionodoxa arrives at ground level just as the aconites are going under.
Then cyclamen coum for something that is neither yellow nor white, dwarf iris for the first blue of the year, and scilla to carry the same patch into March. Six things, one square metre, and something in flower from January through to April.
The common snowdrop, in flower the same weeks.
The crocus that naturalises fastest, a fortnight behind.
Blue at ground level as the aconites go under.
Magenta rather than yellow, and it flowers all winter.
The first blue of the year, and ten centimetres tall.
Deep blue in March, and it seeds itself about.