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Delphiniums
No other possible choice in the first week they are up and open. There are plenty of reservations about delphiniums - slugs, staking, various plagues - but none when their clear blue appears like a break in the clouds. White ones can be stately; pink ones simply miss the point.
Blue is notoriously hard to photograph. This clump is, I believe, Lord Butler (the late R.A. Butler loved delphiniums; at his last country house, Spencers in Essex they are grown wholesale, almost like a crop). but the blue you see here is paler and less penetrating than the real thing.
My habit of burying the label with the plant (you can't lose it, but you can't find it either) sometimes means I am uncertain about cultivar names. Once you have fallen in love with a delphinium it scarcely seems to matter. Cuttings in spring will give you more of the same.
In technical terms 'Lord Butler' is a small (meaning 5') elatum group cultivar. I only stake it when things go wrong, and cut it down to promising-looking side-shoots when the first tall inflorescence fades. With food and water it flowers again, though never with its first dazzling impact.
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