Foxglove Bishy Barnabee Mix

Our own house blend, put together from the foxgloves we grow and trial here at Salle Moor Hall Farm each year. Classic tall pinks, pure whites, soft purples and creams in one packet, so a single sowing gives you a whole cottage-garden display rather than a block of one colour.

Expect spires of 1.5m and often more, with heavily speckled throats. Those markings are not decoration. They are landing lights, evolved to steer long-tongued bumblebees down the tube to the nectar, and on a warm June morning the plants are genuinely busy. Being a mix, it is a lottery, and that is the point of it; you will not know what any given plant is until it opens in its second year. If you need a specific colour, buy a named variety.

It is a biennial, so leaves the first year and flowers the second. Leave a few heads to ripen and it will keep a wandering colony going indefinitely.

Every part of a foxglove is highly toxic and eating any of it can be fatal. Wear gloves to handle the plants, keep the seed away from small children, and do not plant it where pets or grazing animals can reach it.