Foxglove Primrose Yellow

Soft creamy-lemon bells, freckled inside with small chocolate spots, on spires of 1.2 to 1.5m. It is a long way from the usual purple, and it is the one to plant where you need to lift a dark corner, because pale yellow holds light under a tree or against a north wall when stronger colours go flat.

It also does something specific in a colour scheme. Yellow and purple sit opposite each other, so a group of these among ordinary purple foxgloves is about as strong a pairing as cottage planting offers. The common carder bee is particularly attached to foxgloves and works these as hard as any.

The caution is the usual one for a colour selection. Grown near purple foxgloves it will cross, and the seedlings come back purple within a couple of generations. Keep it separate, or accept that you are re-sowing every few years.

Every part of a foxglove is highly toxic and eating any of it can be fatal. Wear gloves to handle the plants and keep the seed away from small children.