Plant guide: Foxgloves
There are few flowers more majestic than the foxglove.
Their arrival in the garden for us, along with the peonies and the first roses, signals the start of summer and our favourite time of year.
Foxgloves make amazing cut flowers and are brilliant for attracting pollinators to your garden -- bumble bees in particular love their flowers, both for their nectar and as shelter on rainy days!
Best of all, they are really easy to grow from seed, so for the price of a few small packets of seeds one year, your garden can be filled with their towering spires the following summer.
Foxgloves are one of the first plants we learn to identify as a child- and we would hazard a guess that even the less green fingered among us could spot a foxglove and know that they are poisonous. Make sure that no parts of the plant are ingested, and wash your hands after handling them or wear gloves. Teach your children that they mustn’t put them in their mouths and keep them away from plant nibbling pets!
Latin name: Digitalis Purpurea
Plant type
Biennial, which means they live for two years. They grow into a small plant from seed in their first year and then they flower, set seed and die in their second year. So, if you want to grow a foxglove from seed, you need to plan a bit ahead – sowing the seeds the year before they flower.
Growing conditions
Foxgloves prefer light dappled shade. They would grow in the wild at the edge of woodlands, so recreating this environment in the garden is ideal: slightly sheltered and with some cover, but with access to sunlight for parts of the day. They need a moist but well drained soil and won’t do well in conditions that are very dry or waterlogged. Digging in plenty of well-rotted organic matter to dry soils would help to improve them.
How to grow / plant
Foxgloves can be bought in containers from most garden centres and nurseries at, or just before, the time of flowering ready to plant. However, they’re a really easy plant to grow from seed, so with a bit of extra time and space to grow them, this can be a much cheaper way to fill your garden!
Planting a container-grown plant
If planting from a container, foxgloves are usually available in Spring time and Summer. Dig a hole to the depth of the container, and a bit wider. Place the plant into the hole, back fill, and water in well. It will be necessary to keep the plant really well watered as it settles into its new position – especially as this is likely to be quite a dry time of year.
Sowing from seed
If you are growing from seed, you will need to sow the seed the year before.
Foxgloves flower from May – July, and sowing them at this time a year before is also perfect. You can sow them directly in the ground, but we prefer to start them off under cover and grow strong little plants in pots that will be ready to plant out into their final positions by the end of the summer or early autumn.
Foxglove seeds are absolutely tiny so sow them somewhere with good light so you can see what you are doing and avoid sowing outside on a windy day- one gust of wind and you could lose all of your seed!
Fill your tray with compost and water the compost before you sow- a good way to do this is to stand your seed tray in a tray of water and let the compost absorb all of the water.
Tip out the seeds into your hand, take a pinch and sprinkle quickly over the surface of the compost as thinly as possible. A little bit of seed will go a long way. The packet I am sowing in the photos said that it contained around 300 seeds and I used it to sow one seed tray and two recycled fruit trays worth. The seeds are a light brown colour so you can (just about!) see them on the surface of the compost – aim for as even coverage as you can.
Foxgloves need light to germinate, so don’t cover the seed; just lightly pat the top of the compost so that the seed is in contact with the compost and then place on a windowsill, it doesn’t need to be in full sun, and keep the compost moist.
Seedlings should be pricked out when they develop their second set of leaves – about a month after sowing – and put into individual pots. (See our guide to pricking out for more info.)
If you have enough space, they can be kept in pots throughout the Winter and planted the following Spring. Alternatively, plant them into their final positions in Autumn, ready for the following year. (See above for how to plant.)
Care:
Foxgloves are generally trouble free and require little care. The main requirement is water, especially once they are first planted and throughout dry hot spells.
After flowering, foxgloves quickly set seed. You can leave the seedheads to spread seed, which germinates easily, and enjoy more foxgloves the following year. But do be aware that they often hybridise with other foxglove cultivars, so you end up with different coloured flowers than the originals. If you don’t want this to happen, cut back the plant once it has finished flowering (and weed out any rogue seedlings that appear…) Once the seed is spent, the plant will start to die, so you can remove them from the garden at this point.
Uses:
As well as looking majestic in the garden, foxglove spires also make excellent cut flowers. Cut them when a third of the flowers on the spike are open (the rest will open inside) and sear the ends in boiling water for a few seconds before putting them in the vase. Remember that foxgloves are poisonous if eaten, so make sure to keep away from children and pets if you’re bringing them into the house.
Grow with:
Foxgloves have a classic English country garden vibe, so look really good growing alongside other similar plants that are happy in part shade, such as geraniums and ferns. As they naturally grow in a woodland setting, they are also a really useful plant for growing under trees, adding height and colour in what can sometimes be a difficult planting location.
Our favourite varieties:
Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’ is a pure white foxglove that is really striking either grown on its own or alongside a more traditional pink or purple variety. ‘Camelot Cream,’ as the name suggests, has cream-coloured flowers, which are speckled inside with pink dots in that distinctive foxglove pattern on the bottom of the flower tube. We’re trying out ‘Sutton’s Apricot’ for the first time this year, a lovely coral peach coloured flowered, which we can’t wait to see in the garden…
