Vespoid: Fuchsias, a kind of appeal.

When my better half, Sue, moved down from Scotland nearly 30 years ago, she brought with her a fuchsia called ‘Dancing Flame’. Sadly, we no longer have it, but it is still available and the RHS website listing says there are 9 suppliers.

'Adalbert Bogner'

Sue was a big fan of fuchsias; I have to admit I was myself somewhat indifferent. We both worked on a nursery for the next 25 years and fuchsias became one of the plant groups for which it was well known. Between us, we built up a very diverse and interesting range, securing plants from a wide range of sources to do so.

'Annie Guerts'

We are both retired now and the nursery no longer grows fuchsias. Over the years that we were there Sue took plants of her favourites home with her or bought plants from other nurseries and then took cuttings from them to add to the nursery catalogue.

'Catherina'

Earlier this year I took stock of what we still had and set about taking cuttings from each of them to try to get young plants going, many of them being old and in poor condition. My list ran to 58 varieties. I just checked them all against the RHS listing and found that 22 are no longer available from UK nurseries, with a further 11 listed by only one.

'Comperen Lutea'

I don’t quite know what to think about that. Some of them are surpassingly beautiful varieties that it seems very sad to lose. On the other hand, Fuchsias are one of those vast groups where it is inevitable that old varieties will disappear in order to make room for new ones. Fuchsias are hardly ever troubled by viruses, which spell the demise of so many plant varieties and while individual plants may only thrive for a few years, if they are propagated regularly the clones can be very long lived.

'Cornish Pixie'

I feel something of a responsibility to keep going the ones we have and I wish I was in a position to disseminate them more widely but running any sort of nursery out of our small and over-full garden is impracticable. In common with many other groups of plants, fuchsias have in recent times fallen victim to a newly introduced pest, gall mite in this instance. It is possible that some of the varieties we have are resistant or immune and the more varieties that are grown, the more likely it is that a good range will survive the pest.

'Day by Day'

I have strong young plants of a good proportion of what we have and will make every effort to keep them going and to spread them around if I can. When I posted some montages of fuchsia pictures on Twitter recently there was a very positive response so there is clearly a fan base out there. I don’t think many people realise just how slender is the thread by which many of our garden plants hang on in cultivation.