Alpine Columbine

Aquilegia alpinum

• Position: full sun or partial shade
• Soil: fertile, moist, well-drained soil
• Rate of growth: average
• Flowering period: May
• Hardiness: fully hardy
  
  Aquilegias are grown for their distinctive, delicate, nodding flowers, that vary in shape and size between species. The alpinas have nodding blue flowers, sometimes with white petal tips, in late spring above finely divided, bluish-green foliage. This alpine columbine is perfect for rich soils in a sun or part shade and looks equally at home in a cottage-style scheme, among grasses, or dotted through a perennial border. It is quite short-lived, but self-seeds freely, though rarely to nuisance level.
  
  
• Garden care: Sow seeds in containers in a cold frame in spring. Deadhead to prolong flowering. Contact with the sap may cause skin irritation.