Hardy Plant Society

Campanula patula is a rare native plant It is biennial and found in the border country between England and Wales. It is a worthy garden plant but so neglected. Thousands of people grow digitalis and wallflowers etc. Seed is still available from Chiltern Seed and according to the latest edition of the R.H.S. Plant Finder is only available from a few nurseries.

Its common name is the spreading bellflower because the petals splay out a little, although not a large amount. In winter you cannot mistake the little low growing green rosette and then in summer it erupts into a little bushlet of many fine branchlets, 15cm high, sometimes more, and more or less the same in width. It has a long season of many flowers which are usually a lovely blue although can be a little variable.. One plant alone can truly produce hundreds of flowers. It seeds about but is never a nuisance. It does equally well in my neutral to acid clay-ey soil as in my daughter’s nice free draining and alkaline conditions. It also does equally well in sun or shade!!

When friends see it in my garden, they beg for seed – it is so lovely. It is therefore mystifying that it is so neglected. E. A, Bowles liked it and Graham Rice has written about it in “Hardy Perennials”. Other than that..... nothing.