Heuchera (coral bells) are a mainstay of winter garden-centre sales and provide valuable ground cover for sun or light shade all year, their leaves lying close to the ground and preventing weeds.
Heuchera (main) have become very popular in the past 20 years, with much breeding work in North America for leaf colour, shape, flower size and persistence. Heuchera are grown for their more or less evergreen leaves in browns, greens, oranges, red, silver and yellows, often intricately patterned, with flowers in cream, pink and white. They are propagated in tissue culture laboratories, which is an important factor in their abundance and reasonable price.
Also increasingly popular are × Heucherella, a hybrid with Tiarella (foam flower), a closely related member of the saxifrage family. Sometimes marketed as “foamy bells”, they are grown in the same way as heuchera.
In some ways, × Heucherella are better garden plants, as they have the pointed tiarella foliage, are pollinator-friendly and some trail as much as 90cm – ideal for edges of raised beds, containers and where there is space to fill. A good example is × Heucherella “Yellowstone Falls”, with yellow, red-marked leaves and white summer flowers.
“Marmalade” is typical of the enormous range of heuchera offered to gardeners. Bred in the US, it has ruffled leaves in pink, bronze and yellow, with brownish summer flowers to 25cm. As with many plants, a winning formula gives rise to a series of equally widely sold variants – “Orange Marmalade” and “Lime Marmalade” in this case.
New heuchera are usually protected by plant breeders’ rights, with only permitted nurseries being allowed to propagate plants.
The vivid leaves of Heuchera ‘Blackberry Jam’ (Photo: Tim Sandall)Happily, propagation for own use is permitted in Britain, which is just as well, because heuchera can stagnate if not divided every four years or so. Lift the whole plant in April, pull it apart into pieces, each with roots and leaves, then replant each portion. Alternatively, cut off the growing “crowns” around the edge, pot up and leave to root and grow into strong plants to set out from late summer.
Garden-centre plants bought now have been growing for about a year and you can often divide the plants into two or three. Since heuchera look best when planted in groups – each spreads only to about 45cm – this is a great saving.
Heuchera are woodland plants in their native North America and tolerate moderate shade. Books suggest planting in notoriously elusive “moist, but well-drained” soil, but in practice, they need watering only in prolonged dry spells once they are established. They live in deep leaf litter in native forests, so adding compost or leaf mould before planting and as mulch is ideal.
For a deeper shade, consider Tiarella, which is not evergreen, but is especially shade-tolerant and carries masses of creamy white, late-spring flower spikes.
Tiarella cordifolia spreads by runners while T. wherryi is clump-forming.
Breeders have worked on these too: T. “Spring Symphony” (far left), for example, has bright green, dark-ribbed evergreen foliage and pale pink flowers.
The closely related Tellima grandiflora (fringe cups) has charming, round, hairy, evergreen leaves, pink when they open, darkening with age and 60cm tall spikes of bell-shaped fringed pinkish flowers. Less showy than Heuchera and × Heucherella, they are robust, grow in most places, including moderate shade and offer fine ground cover.The RHS is a charity inspiring everyone to grow via its research, advisory, outreach, shows and gardens. For more information, visit: rhs.org.uk
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