Peach-leafed Bellflower
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Peach-leafed Bellflower (Campanula persicifolia)
Dark blue or white bell-shaped flowers are borne on long, thin, tough stems. It’s an easy care perennial plant that looks good in a perennial flower bed or in the landscape. Called peach-leafed campanula or peach-leafed bellflower. I tend to use the latter.
Characteristics:
The little plant is made up of basal foliage up to about a foot tall and wide when not in bloom. In late spring they send up flowering stems to nearly 2 ft. tall. The bell-shaped flowers bloom from bottom to top over a long period. The flowers last at least two weeks in the vase!
Conditions:
These are tough little plants. Give them fairly good garden soil, mulch them, and they can handle fairly dry conditions! Mine get winter rains that keep the soil moist well into their bloom time. After that I water about every 1-2 weeks.
Spacing: Plant 18″ apart.
Favorite Varieties:
They come in blue and white, and both are beautiful in spring bouquets. The blue is a dark true blue. ‘Tellham Beauty’ is a variety with a clear, medium blue flower.
Starting your Peach-leafed Bellflower
Fairly easy to start in seeding cells. The seeds are tiny and they can take over a month to germinate – so don’t give up. When I seed these I sow several into each cell. Usually a few germinate and I pull out all but one. Seeds may be purchased for blue, white, or mixed.
Plants are becoming more popular these days so you may be able to find them in 4” pots. Many are available through mail order catalogs.
Harvesting
Harvest stems when the first few flowers have just opened as the bottom of the flower column. Cut the stems at the base. When the stems are cut before the flowers have set seed, you may get another round of stems later in the season, but they’ll be shorter.
Usual post-harvest handling.
