Erysimum cheirii, E. allionii and hybrids

Common name: Wallflower
Plant type: Biennial
Flower color: Yellows, oranges, reds
Bloom period: Early spring-early summer
Fragrance: Strong and sweet
Height: 1-2'
Hardiness: Zones 5-9
Light needs: Full sun
Moisture needs: Average to dry
Seasonal character: Clusters of bright, richly colored blossoms in early spring

Like most biennials, wallflowers are little grown in the U.S. More's the pity. We Americans seem to have two flower categories fixed our brains: perennial and annual. Biennials--being betwixt and between--seem to bewilder us. Either we think of it as an annual that takes two years to bloom, or as a perennial that dies after its second year. (Biennial foxgloves suffer from the same identity crisis.)

We should grow wallflowers more. No flower is more old-fashioned--or more delightful in early spring. While many spring bloomers have pale, tentative colors of pink and light blue, wallflowers bloom in robust hues of yellow, orange, russet, red, and deep maroon to almost black. And they have a rich fragrance that is most pronounced on a sunny day.

Wallflowers, which along with similarly fragrant stocks, are called giroflées (literally, "clove-scented") in French, are widely grown as winter bedding plants and are found self-sown through many cottage gardens and their walls. That's where they get their English name of "wallflower": they love the sharp drainage of a little pocket of gritty soil in a stone wall.

That's your hint on how to grow wallflowers: give them excellent drainage, especially if you live in the northern parts of their range and you have clay soil. Mix some coarse sand and compost into the planting area. And give them full sun; wallflowers aren't meant for shade.

Unless you live near a creative nursery, you'll probably have to grow your wallflowers from seed if you want to have them in your garden. Start the seed in late summer in Zones 7-9 for fall setting out and in earliest winter in colder zones for early spring transplant.

Wallflowers look great interplanted with bright yellow tulips, especially the lily-flowered types whose elegant forms contrast nicely with the mounded flower heads of the wallflowers. Silver-leaved plants such as artemisias also are good companions. If they're part of a bedding scheme, the color combination could be carried on later in the season with the delightful chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguinea), whose deep red, almost chocolate-colored blossoms also smell exactly like chocolate.

Deadheading wallflowers prolongs their bloom, but let some of them go to seed in the end. They are often generous self-sowers, or you can gather the seed and resow it yourself.

Isn't it interesting that the cabbage family gives us some of our most fragrant annuals and biennials, including not only wallflowers, but also garden stocks and the wonderful night-scented stock? While the vegetable branch of the family is rather smelly and malodorous, due to a high sulfur content in their leaves, the members grown for their flowers couldn't smell more bewitching. One of the innumerable mysteries of the garden...

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Products of Interest:
Dibble (plantoir)
Trowel (transplantoir)
Zinc cockerel plant tag
Set of 5 'Lorraine' hand tools

Enjoy some other plants in profile:

Cimicifuga simplex 'The Pearl'	Corylopsis glabra	Euonymus europaeus	Hamamelis virginiana
Hamamelis x intermedia	Jasminum nudiflorum	Lonicera fragrantissima	Nepeta sibirica 'Souvenir d'André Chaudon'
Parrotia persica	Pulsatilla vulgaris (formerly Anemone pulsatilla)	Rosa x multiflora 'Ghislaine de Felighonde'	Sarcococca ruscifolia
Agastache rupestris	Alchemilla mollis	Anchusa azurea	Buddleia alternifolia
Calamintha grandiflora	Colchicum species	Helianthella quinquenervis	Helleborus niger
Hibiscus syriacus 'Bluebird'	Lespedeza thunbergii	Rosa x 'Gloire de Dijon'	Solidago rugosa
Tilia x europaea