Colorful columbines always a garden favorite
When shopping for perennials in springtime, it's hard to resist a pot filled with blooming columbines. The unique and showy spurred flowers nodding above dainty clumps of handsome blue-green foliage are quite charming.
This old-fashioned favorite comes in colors to fit any color scheme: blue, lavender, pink, red, white and yellow, as well as many different bicolored combinations.
Although columbines are cold-hardy perennials, they're short-lived, often dying out after just a few years. Your garden will never be without columbines, though, as long as you allow some of the seeds to drop to the ground. But you may be in for quite a surprise when new flower colors suddenly appear. Columbines are promiscuous, readily cross-pollinating with each other to produce offspring that look nothing like their parents.
If you don't want any color surprises, you should separate different kinds of columbines as much as possible in your garden and also make sure to remove stalks of fading flowers before they drop their seeds. Removing spent flowers before they put lots of energy into producing seeds may also help prolong the life of prized varieties.
Columbines come from many different places in the world, including Switzerland, Japan, Siberia, Mexico and the Rocky Mountains. Particularly well-suited to this region is our own wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), native to a wide region of central and eastern North America. When allowed to self-seed, wild columbines easily naturalize in the woodland garden. Another plus: Their red and yellow flowers attract hummingbirds in spring, when few other nectar sources are available.
Two more good reasons to grow columbines: the flowers attract butterflies and are long lasting in bouquets.
The best place to plant columbines is where they'll get morning sun and afternoon shade. The plants grow best in moist, well-drained soil. Covering any bare ground around the plants with wood chips or other mulch helps conserve soil moisture.
You may have to stake the tallest varieties when they're in bloom, but you'll never need to bother digging and dividing overgrown plants. Columbines don't live long enough to require division.
Although columbines are easy to grow, the appearance of their foliage may be damaged by mildew infection or by leaf miners. Thinning out plants to provide good air circulation helps prevent mildew. To control leaf miners, pick off and destroy any leaves that have the wavy tracks characteristic of the damage caused by this insect pest. Anytime the foliage starts to look ratty, you can just clip the plants back to the ground. A mound of fresh new foliage will soon emerge.