Offering flowers from late spring into summer, this varied genus of hardy perennials is deservedly growing in popularity
WORDS NAOMI SLADE PHOTOGRAPHS DIANNA JAZWINSKI
Hard-working and handsome, plants from the genus Geum are perfect for their season. Coming into bloom in spring, just as the tree canopy starts to close and earlier plants retreat, geums carry on flowering until all the joys of summer are in full spate. They are hardy, evergreen and resistant to pests and diseases. The edible leaves and clove-scented roots have been used for brewing, baking and in medicinal tinctures to combat chills and catarrh – and even protect against plague. Nowadays, however, it is as a garden subject that Geum is best known and grown.
“I first got into Geum when I bought one that was wrongly named, and visited the National Collection holder to have it identified,” says Sue Martin, who now holds the UK’s only National Collection of Geum. She was soon hooked, and when she retired she started amassing Geum in earnest, eventually inheriting the National Collection she had earlier consulted. “They are such lovely plants, and so diverse,” she says.
To learn more about her new passion, Sue went to the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to study preserved specimens and their origins. With a map that was soon covered in location markers, she discovered that there was a mass of Geum across the top of the globe, between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer.
“In the British Isles, there are two native species. In the south there is Geum urbanum or wood avens, which grows in shaded copses, and in the north we have larger G. rivale or water avens, which is found in damp and shady locations,” she says. “There is a cluster in the Balkans, mainly alpines such as G. coccineum, and another one in South America, including G. quellyon, which are the ancestors of the big commercial cultivars.”
In cultivation, Geum generally falls into one of three loose types. The cultivars of G. quellyon form upright clumps with large, brightly coloured blooms. These include stellar performers such as G. ‘Totally Tangerine’ and new G. Scarlet Tempest (= ‘Macgeu001’) from the Tempest Series. A number of compact alpine forms, such as G. coccineum ‘Cooky’, are also common in garden centres, thanks to their bold, brick-red flowers. The third type is made up of spreading, rhi
