Eryngium

A diverse range of plants, with over 250 species throughout the world. Growing throughout our garden, but not in shady positions. Individual flowers are small, but they are arranged in tight cone-like or rounded heads and often surrounded by spiny colourful bracts enhancing their beauty. Small insects, including bees adore the flowers. Foliage, although at times spiny, can be deeply cut and divided and with some coloured in shades of metallic blue-purple to silver. Full sun is required and a well drained soil, but with some of the taller species requiring a richer, more moisture-retentive soil to get the best out of them. There are two native species, the commonest being sea holly, which grows in sand and shingle around much of the coastline, including Clacton seafront!

Possibly the most important insect plant in our Reservoir Garden in midsummer, Eryngiums come in a variety of shapes and sizes, though the shorter, drought-tolerant forms with sometimes larger, often bluish, flowerheads are probably the best. Stand watching them in sunlight and you will see a steady progression of bumblebees, honeybees, smaller solitary bees, wasps and hornets, hoverflies, tachinid flies, butterflies, ladybirds and other beetles ... the list just goes on! Although more suited to sand-dunes than gardens, the native sea holly has particular local resonance as a source of a sweetmeat (candied eryngo root) for which Colchester was famous in centuries past, as much an icon of the place as the native oyster and Roman centurion.