We have reached that time of year when we drift gently into autumn. Summer fades away, and many popular pollinator resources come to an end. Verbena, a garden star, is one I will be particularly sad to say goodbye to.
Gardens can be incredibly important for our pollinators. It is reckoned that gardens occupy an area several times larger than that occupied by all of our Nature Reserves. And because gardens are different the length and breadth of the country they bring enormous variety, which is good as different pollinators have different preferences and needs. Add the fact that together gardens can form effective wildlife corridors and you can see why we place such environmental value on them.
Verbena, known to some as vervain, is a great pollinator plant. It’s nectar rich, and it isn’t just bees that appreciate it. Moths, butterflies, wasps, and hoverflies will also visit.
As ever there is a medicinal story behind this plant – in this instance one of the more notable uses was as a counter to high blood pressure.
In Madrid we can uncover a more unusual use for verbena’s lilac flowers. The blooms were traditionally worn as dazzling lapel ornaments during a trio of Madrid festivals. The plant also caught the eye of famous American author William Faulkner who included references to it in the final chapter of his 1938 novel The Unvanquished. Much earlier the artist Philippe Mercier captured verbena in one of his paintings which currently hangs in Dumfries Art Gallery.
At the start of 2023 the Romanian Postal Service issued a set of stamps which were ostensibly promoting “Green Pharmacy”. Included in the set of ten stamps was one highlighting verbena which the authors said had beneficial properties for preserving health and treating certain ailments due to – amongst other things – anaesthetic and anti-inflammatory qualities.
If you were designing a garden for wildlife, you would likely be tempted to include verbena. Not only is it tall, it has strong, narrow stems with few leaves which mean that you can easily see what is planted beneath it. This makes it a good ‘structural’ plant for those who like to design their garden a little. There is an agreeable amount of space around the flower heads all the better to appreciate the white, purple or lilac blooms and the pollinators which eagerly visit. It certainly gives height to a garden, and goes well both in timing and shape alongside other umbels such as yarrow and wild carrot, as well as nasturtiums.
Verbena comes in many varieties, both Slender and Garden Verbena are probably best viewed as annuals, whereas the purple flowering Verbena bonariensis (a name derived from Buenos Aires where it was apparently discovered) is more likely to survive as a perennial, but I suspect that in Scotland you may still need to molly-coddle it a wee bit.
There are other lilac/blue/purple plants I will be sad to wave goodbye for 2023 to – viper’s bugloss, borage, devil’s bit scabious. But I know we will see them again next year and I am optimistic that gardens in particular are increasingly bee-friendly.
We are getting there. More and more gardeners are planning flowering activity which fills the entire year, yet more are ditching any form of pesticides, even double blooms are seemingly dropping in popularity. The wildlife gardening message, thanks to the sterling work of groups like Bumblebee Conservation Trust and Gardens for Life, is making a difference.
Here’s to autumn, and the in due course 2024 when we can meet up with verbena again.
Scottish pollinators 