Chapters

Caring for Erysimum
Plants

Erysimum - Growing Guide

Caring for Erysimum

(syn. CHIERANTHUS)

Wallflower

Burncoose only offers a couple of perennial wallflowers in its catalogue. We do not stock any of the popular annual and biannual forms commonly grown as summer bedding plants or in municipal displays.

Both are vigorous evergreen subshrubs with lance shaped green leaves that grow to around 30in in height with a spread of, say, 24in in maturity. They need a light trimming after flowering to stop them getting ‘leggy’ and will grow in almost any well drained soil conditions in full sun. New growth cuttings can readily be taken in spring as small side shoots from the main stems.

E. ‘Bowles Mauve’ is an ever popular and widely grown variety with long racemes of flowers from late winter and on into summer. It makes an excellent patio plant and is widely used in upraised planters, rockeries and as a formal edging plant to herbaceous borders. An early harbinger of spring in the garden.

Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve'

Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' & Echium piniana

E. ‘Apricot Twist’ has similar growing habits but spectacular apricot to burnt-orange flowers. An unusual colour in the garden landscape this early in the spring.