 Colourful spires of lupins conjure up visions of the romantic cottage garden. Despite being short lived, the flower spikes make a bold statement in the early summer border and are often used in gardens today, in planting schemes great and small. Elton John requested lupins in his Rosemary Verey designed rainbow border, along with delphiniums, hollyhocks' and peonies, as he wanted flowers he remembered from his boyhood. Rosemary uses the same combination in her own garden at Barnsley House and also grows the tree lupin, Lupinus arboreus, in her midsummer border to provide a riot of bold primary colours with scarlet poppies and bright blue delphiniums.The name lupin comes from 'lupus' meaning a wolf or destroyer, and, according to Prof William Stern, in his fascinating Dictionary of Plant Names, stems from the erroneous belief that these plants destroyed the fertility of the soil. They do, indeed, grow in poor soils, but this is because, like peas, they can make their own nitrogen fertiliser with the help of beneficial bacteria that live in their roots. |
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| Ancestors of the garden lupin and its relations grow wild in the Andes, Rockies, Mediterranean, African highlands and in South America. The tree lupin was brought over from California in 1793. An excellent choice for coastal gardens, they were planted on the Norfolk coast at Blakeney Point before the Second World War as a shelter for migrant birds. Today, they have expanded into dense yellow, honey scented thickets. Unusual but noteworthy species for the garden include Lupinus albifrons and Lupinus ornatus. Lupinus albifrons is a shrubby plant with short spikes of delicate flowers turning from cream, through lavender, to violet blue. Silky, silvery leaves provide architectural interest until autumn. Lupinus ornatus is a connoisseur's plant lovingly described by the plantsman Graham Stewart Thomas, when covered with spires of blue and white, as 'one of the loveliest sights in the garden'. The lupin that has had most influence on our garden varieties is the North American blue species, Lupinus polyphyllus. Crossed with the tree lupin and a range of annual species it has brought us the familiar hybrid garden lupin. |
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 The beautiful colour range found today started with the dedicated, almost obsessive efforts of one man in the early 1900s: George Russell. Russell, a jobbing gardener, was familiar with the early crosses derived from Lupinus polphyllus, but was not impressed with their weak blue, purple and white colours and gappy flower spikes. In 1911, when in his late 50s, he took it upon himself to breed the perfect lupin. On a modest allotment in York, he grew on seeds and plants sent from around the world and let the bees get to work carrying pollen from one flower spike to another. He planted the resulting seeds and grew them until they flowered. Russell's skill was rogueing: ruthlessly removing all the plants that did not come up to his standard. Over the years his selected flower spikes became denser, larger and more colourful.His lifetime's work could easily have been buried with him, as he was very secretive, but a nurseryman from Codsell, James Baker, stepped in and saved the day. He accused Russell of being selfish, after which Russell, then in his late 70s, gave him all his stock of thousands of lupins. There were, of course, conditions. His assistant, Sonny, was to be guaranteed a job for the rest of his life, and he himself could rogue the new plants. True to his word, he turned up the next year and pulled out those he considered inferior, leaving only 200 out of thousands. With Russell's ruthlessness, and Baker's skill, many of the results are still with us today. |
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