Meetings with plants: Fuchsia magellanica ‘Riccartonii’
Bramble & Briar #67
I am fan of plants that will give me flowers, while asking for very little in return. Perhaps this makes me, unlike that most handsome of roses, a particularly ungenerous gardener, but there it is. Give me an excess of flowers, with a minimum of faff, and you can loiter here as long as you like. A hardy herbaceous perennial (some of my best friends are geraniums) is ideal. A flowering shrub, even better.
I grew up in a reasonably leafy and blossom-filled London street, where shrubs would assault you with their flowers the moment you opened the garden gate. And I, having at least two local paper rounds, opened a fair few gates in my time, pushing my way past hydrangeas and camellias, roses and fuchsias. ‘Dancing Dollies’, my Ma would call the blossoms on these last – and you can kind of see why, they’ve a definite air of the ballerina, mid pirouette. Of course I either took them for granted or, with the misplaced confidence of youth, wrote them off as old-lady plants (I’ve an ancient blog post here about both my shame at having conceived of such a phrase, and my dawning realisation that I might myself be turning into an old lady). Now, I know better, and they all play a part in my garden. (The shrubs, not the old ladies. Though… wouldn’t that be fun?)
Few plants are more reliable than Fuchsia magellanica ‘Riccartonii’. Fresh green leaves on beetroot red stalks, arching cinnamon stems and, from late summer well into autumn, slender magenta flowers with billowing skirts, dark purple accents and the characteristically long stamens, each with a little ballet-slipper anther on the end. I might prune three or four of the oldest stems away in early spring if I remember, but that’s the sum of the consideration this particular shrub gets all year – in terms of work, that is. In terms of being gazed at, I lavish that kind of attention upon it day after day, but that’s hardly an effort. It will grow to 2m tall, though it rarely suggests a desire to reach quite half that here in the dappled shade of my garden. Reliable, beautiful – slightly scrappy, if I’m honest, and that’s just fine with me.
That beautiful-but-scrappy vibe is shared by some of Riccartonii’s closest relatives, the pure white ‘Hawkshead’ and palest pink Fuchsia magellanica var. molinae ‘Alba’, aka maiden’s blush. I plant any and all of the above, anywhere I have the chance.
Have you tried Riccartonii's fruit? Catch them at the ripe moment and they are very good indeed - expect strawberries and kiwi. Definitely one of the better flavoured varieties
I am just getting started with planting perennials at my new house, and the whole experience is new to me. I’ve been researching the perennials I want to plant in the spring, and hadn’t even considered fuchsias—until now!