Veronica

Generally sun loving plants for the border or borders edge. All benefit with being cut down or trimmed over after flowering. The true blue of V. austriaca 'Crater Lake Blue' is such a valuable addition to the summer's palette.

All Veronica flowers are a magnet for a range of pollinators, those with a dense, spike-like flowering structure being specially valuable for bumblebees and day-flying burnet moths. The patch-forming perennial species also help to conserve water in dry gardens and provide a refuge for beneficial predators such as ground-beetles.

Veronica is now an expanded genus, with the recent inclusion of  Hebe, Parahebe and Synthyris.