Anemone

Anemones have been grown in British gardens since the reign of Elizabeth I, and the genus does two quite different jobs. The blanda and nemorosa sorts are the woodlanders, low carpets of starry flowers under shrubs and in rough grass in the earliest part of spring, spreading quietly and asking nothing of you once they are in. Coronaria is the other one entirely.

Coronaria is the florist’s anemone, the one with the black eye and the ruff of leaves just below the flower. It is grown for cutting and for bedding rather than for naturalising, and because it takes roughly fourteen weeks from planting to flowering, you can have it in flower over a very long season by putting in a few corms every fortnight instead of the whole bag at once. Most people plant them all on the same day.

Choosing the Corms

Here is the thing nobody tells you. Unlike almost every bulb we sell, where the biggest is the best, a large anemone corm is not what you want, because it has grown too accustomed to wherever it came from and gone woody and tough, and it will not make the vigorous growth a smaller one will. If you are offered large corms the best you can do is refuse them.

Growing Them

Anemones develop a vigorous root system and must be given sufficient room. The best results come from planting 5cm deep and 10cm apart, and they flower at their best in a well drained loam, so lighten heavy ground with coarse sand and leaf mould and add humus where the soil is sandy.

One last thing, and it goes against what most people assume. Give an application of lime and mulch every year in early autumn, because contrary to popular belief anemones favour an alkaline soil.