Baptisias On Trial

It might just be an impression but I think British gardens have fairly few North American plants, compared to how many European, Asiatic, and even South African plants that are grown fairly widely.

We have the big evergreen Magnolia grandiflora, coreopsis, rudbeckias, echinaceas, and the gorgeous amsonias that are becoming better known too. It’s probably fair to say that it’s unlikely that a developed continent with good transport links would bring something new to British gardens.

Enter, The Baptisias

While baptisias have been gaining traction in American and European horticulture over the last decade or more, they’re still very new and niche in the UK. Indeed getting hold of them at all can be challenging, let alone getting specific varieties.

However these American beauties are slowly becoming more available, and gardeners here are noticing them.

Baptisia ‘Burgundy Blast’

The Royal Horticultural Society is currently trialling around 40 different baptisias at Wisley, its garden just west of London, with the intention of awarding the very best ones the coveted and internationally recognised Award of Garden Merit (AGM).

And every fortnight until the end of their flowering season I will make the long journey up there to join my colleagues on the judging team.

Points Of View

What interests me about baptisias is that they’re very modern plants.

In these times of great interest in sustainability we need plants that aren’t too demanding. Modern life is busy and few of us get to spend as much time in our gardens as we would like. We need plants that look after themselves but also reward us with flowers and multi-season interest.

With more extreme summers and seemingly more and more frequent restrictions on water consumption, we also need plants that are water-wise. It’s one thing to water plants when they’re just getting established but carrying buckets of water around the garden to water things every time it gets hot and dry is not sustainable for even the most dedicated gardeners.

The seed pods of some baptisias add extra interest

Baptisias are often found in grasslands at the edge of light forests. Competition from grasses and shrubs/trees is not easy for many plants, but with a root system that can reputedly, once plants are established, reach down 6ft (2m) baptisias are beautifully adapted for what can be a tough life.

Also, being in the pea family they’re able to host bacteria in their roots that take nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form the plant can use. This adaptation allows them to cope with very low nutrient levels in the soil.

No Love Please

As gardeners are becoming more and more aware of the importance of protecting soil ecosystems, and of the risks posed by making soil too rich, plants that grow bountifully without being mulched and fed are going to become more and more important.

It was interesting to note that many, if not most, of the baptisias added to the trial suffered issues in their first year in the ground. Mildew and flopping was an issue that largely disappeared from the second year with most varieties; what was particularly noteworthy was that newly planted plants were misbehaving immediately next to slightly older plants that were fine.

The bushy habit of baptisias keeps their roots shaded, but flopping is not a good trait

The pattern was fascinating, and now that all of the plants are in the ground the main problem we’re having is that some of the plants are getting rather large!

My very strong suspicion is that the fertiliser in the compost was making the plants lax and lazy, and that now they’re fending for themselves they’re thriving. Do baptisias resent the gardener’s love for them?

It’s worth noting that Britain’s fairly mild and wet winter has caused issues for plants on heavier soils; it’s probably fair to say that baptisias are better adapted to extremes of drought than they are extremes of wet, at least on less than well-drained soils.

Good Breeding

The hardest part of judging plants in a formal trial is to set aside your own tastes. The second hardest is to tread the fine line of fairness; we don’t want to just give any old plant an award but at the same time expecting absolute perfection from living plants is a bit mean.

Plant breeders in Europe and the US have been working hard to raise baptisias with neat habits, plants that produce lots of flower stems on a fairly small footprint.

Wild baptisias and the earlier breeding efforts can be somewhat lax in habit – fine for a large garden maybe but a pain if the plant squashes its neighbours – so the efforts have been to create more floriferous and self-supporting plants.

I really like baptisia foliage too

Personally I quite like the bulkiness of baptisias. I can see great potential for the foliage to create seasonal ‘topiary’ in soft planting, a bit like balls of English box (Buxus sempervirens) but less disease-prone and a better choice for colder areas. I’d probably be happy with a foliage plant for this purpose, but hey why not have flowers too?

A good range of colours is a big plus, although we don’t really have a really neat and tidy blue on the trial. If any baptisia breeders are reading then this is your next challenge; get us that intense cobalt blue on a compact plant!

I’d like this blue on a more compact plant please

But then on a personal level I don’t mind a bit of scruffiness if I enjoy the overall character of a plant. I’m making a list of plants I think are contenders for award, but the list of ones I want to grow myself doesn’t always overlap.

Investing In The Future

Baptisias are an investment.

You either invest lots of money in a larger plant or you invest time to get a smaller and cheaper plant up to size.

Sometimes you must invest both money and time; there seems to be a few suppliers around selling small plants for big money.

This will take baptisias out of the running for some gardeners. If you need fast results on a tight budget then baptisias are not going to be for you. Buying a small plant that takes five years or thereabouts to reach a decent size requires a confidence in your domestic stability that doesn’t exist for every gardener. Likewise paying big bucks for a plant that’s already a decent size might not appeal to anyone likely to move house who might not be able to take their baptisia with them.

I’m nor sure about the colouring of Baptisia ‘Limelight’ but it flowers well

There are other investment plants around too. I would argue that peonies, especially the ‘intersectional’ or ‘Itoh’ peonies, are investment plants too, along with many trees and shrubs of course. Whether they’re sound investments or not will depend on the gardener’s circumstances and viewpoint.

Are baptisias worth considering at all? I would have to say yes, subject to the suitability of the garden for them. Seed-raised baptisias can be variable even assuming you’ve got the right species, but if you’re wanting baptisias at their best then you’re probably forking out for a variety raised by a patient and diligent breeder. This comes at a cost.

These are big and bulky herbaceous plants – wide as well as fairly tall – and they seem to prefer being the dominant plant in their space so don’t go pairing them with big grasses and so on. Seedheads are a plus as they lose they leaves for winter, and autumn colour can be pretty good.

Gardeners will have mixed opinions about Baptisia ‘Solar Flare’

I think this American beauty is destined to become a staple in British gardens in the coming years. The question now is which ones will receive the Award of Garden Merit?

For the answer to that question we must wait until next year.

(Inclusion in this article does not mean that a variety is doing well or badly in the trials, it just means that I have reasonable pictures of the plant!)