Fuchsia Mrs. Popple – 5 litres

Fuchsia are so worth having, they are problem free and flower continuously for months… We only stock the hardies; Mrs. Popple, Genii (with lovely lime foliage) Madame Cornelissen (red petals with white centre)  the magnificent Fuchsia Magellanica Molinae with slender pale pink flowers and lastly Riccartonii (bright pink outer petals with Purple centre)

Mrs. Popple is the traditional Fuchsia; tough, hardy and very long lived – she has been around since 1899!  she was discovered by Clarence Elliott and it is still popular over 100 years later! It is a vigorous upright shrub with small, dark green leaves. Mrs Popple has showy deep purple and scarlet single flowers, popping up continuously from June until October against strong, healthy deep green elongated foliage that is bronzy coloured when young. This is a really tough and reliable old variety and certainly one of the best Hardy Fuchsias that can form a shrub of considerable size and height. It will grow to 2 metres in height and spread, so nothing like the bedding fuchsias for pots and baskets. This fuchsia is big and bold and can really make a statement.  I planted my “popple” in the wishing well garden and forgot to prune one year – the next season she missed again so by year 3 I was faced with 9 feet of enormousness – she took a brutal prune that spring and seemed to not notice – just gave me yet another wonderful show last year.

We do not ever prune our Fuchsia until the spring and don’t prune too hard either.  They don’t like the winter wet very much and so we plant them a little proud of our heavy clay and put some pea gravel into the planting hole.  Of course, the pollinators love them, and because the flowers are a little too long for the short tongues of some bees they simply chew a little hole at the base to get to the nectar – amazingly ingenious as nature always is…… we will try to get come pictures of this happening in the Wishing Well Garden this summer for you.