Bowling for Erysimum

Bowles’s Mauve is a prolific, fragrant wallflower and has been flowering since December in Villa Marie, despite the harsh, cold winter.

The longest and severest of winters eventually comes to a reluctant end. Spring arrives, bringing with it an increase in temperature, light intensity, and hope. In particular, spring brings radiant days filled with a medley of scents released from early shrubs and emerging perennials. These garden scents are vital, for in these pinched, penury-stricken days, many believe that spring is not always ‘just around the corner’.

However, a whiff of an evocative flower fragrance, can often raise one’s spirit — no wonder aromatherapy has gained such favour in today’s busy world. Yet, for generations, scented flowers and aromatic leaves were strewn on manor floors and church pew seats to elevate the spirits and cleanse stale air of mustiness and odours.

Sometimes, they were burned to purify the atmosphere (particularly in damp, cold rooms) or fashioned into pomanders before being inserted between clothes and household linen. Indeed today, muslin-filled bags of lavender are still put beneath pillows to advance the approach of sleep and foster night-long rest.

Although we cannot have every form of fragrant plant growing in our gardens, there are enough reliable hardy kinds to afford us pleasure during most seasons.

One group in particular I wish to promote today is the old-fashioned biennial wallflower and many of its longer-lasting relations. Biennial wallflowers were (and still are) raised from seed and sold as Cheiranthus, while the perennial forms were distributed as Erysimum. Thankfully, both are now sold under the Erysimum label. Yet, for all of my praise of scent in wallflowers, the best variety, the most floriferous and longest lived, is that sold as Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ named after EA Bowles, owner of Myddleton House near Enfield in England.

This grey-leafed, bushy wallflower, packed with violet flower spikes, loves to live its entire four to five-year life in light, sun-drenched soil which drains easily in winter. During all of this time, it will produce a nonstop succession of flowering spikes (which do not set seed), so, if you have room for only one plant, this is the one to choose. Noted for its nine-month flowering, my own plant of evergreen ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ has been in full bud and partial bloom since last December, despite the long, cold winter. As I write, the promise of ‘best is yet to come’ is very evident.

Left to its own devices, this garden-worthy wallflower would in time become woody and leggy, but the way to extend its lifespan and keep it short-jointed and bushy is to cut it back hard towards mid-summer. By August, it will have recovered and go on to flowering size before autumn grows old. An established plant will measure as much as 30 inches across with a similar height.

Cheap as plants go, this variety is easily sourced and most garden centres will have stock on the benches during April. Add sharp ‘Westland’ grit to heavy soil before planting and choose as sunny a spot as possible. Totally hardy, this plant is reliable, easy-to-manage, and it uplifts during the dullest months of the year. Try a plant in a pot on the balcony or terrace and be delighted all year.