Plant Profile

Sowing and growing Honesty and finding the best forms

There’s something so perfect about purple and lime green together, particularly in early spring when the eye craves colour. Lunaria annua ‘Corfu Blue’ and Euphorbia characias ‘Wulfenni’ make the ideal bedfellows.

By mid April the honesty in my borders is at its best, bringing welcome colour to the garden. I grow Lunaria annua ‘Corfu Blue’, the most lovely form with rich purple-blue flowers, dark stems and purple seed pods that fade through shades of brown and gold to an eventual bone-white. I have only recently cleared the fading plants from last year as their pods are an important part of the autumn and winter garden. First discovered and brought back from Corfu by Mary Keen and introduced by Derry Watkins, it is more substantial than the common magenta-flowered Lunaria annua, forming multi-branching plants over the course of spring with clouds of small flowers that provide the perfect foil for tulips.

Lunaria 'Corfu Blue' is the perfect foil for tulips, and its slightly scented nectar-rich flowers provide food for early bees and butterflies.