Plume Poppy

Big, bold foliage with stunning floral plumes. This is one of the ultimate big impact plants for the garden. Rarely seen and highly sought after, if you have the space it is worth a grow.

Plume Poppy is an excellent plant for adding size and architectural interest in the garden. The strong stems are upstanding with handsome, 25cm, lobed, olive green leaves, that have a soft, silver, woolly underside. Worth growing for the foliage alone, then as the weather warms in summer, the elegant, soft, pink to cream plumes become the icing on the cake. Reminiscent of Smoke Bush the flowers last well and make a gorgeous addition to an arrangement and the bees love them too.

Grow them in your shrub border, at the back of your beds, in a large container or as a standalone specimen or as a screening plant. It holds the prestigious RHS Award of Garden Merit, so you know it has been put through its paces. Gorgeous with grasses, sunflowers, shrubs and more.

Give them plenty of space and plant in a full sun to light shade position. Moderately fertile to humus rich, well drained soils are ideal. Remove spent flowers cutting back to lateral buds to tidy and increase and extend flowering. They can be bullish in a moist, shaded spot, but somewhere warm and sunny will limit this growth, this species is the more mild mannered of the family but gardeners should be mindful. Give them some space to be themselves and you will have an amazing background plant to adore.

Common names for Macleaya cordata include Plume Poppy and Tree Celandine. Syn. Bocconia.