Many gardening enthusiasts had a bad start with larkspurs. The gardening journals are packed with beautiful pictures of high larkspurs, but if you try them in your garden they proof tricky. They do not bloom in profusion and they do not clump but silently disappear after a few years. So what did you do wrong? Or is your garden simply not suitable for larkspurs?

The answer lies in the plants themselves. Most gardening centers offer larkspurs that were propagated by seed. By far the most common varieties there are the socalled `Pacific-Hybrids` that were developed for fast cutting flower production. They do not bloom twice and they are short-lived - ideal for flower production but not for the garden. Yet since they are very cheap to propagate, they have flooded the market for garden plants. The old reliable varietes however have to be propagated by cuttings or division, and only a few nurseries take the trouble to propagate them. So they are rarer and more expensive, but they are worth the money. 

Many of the good varieties were created by Karl Foerster. `Berghimmel` was the first larkspur he introduced to the market in 1926  - after 10 years of crossing and selecting thousands of seedlings. More than 80 years later it is still one of the best larkspurs in the trade. In our nursery it proofed robust, sturdy, floriferous and it produces a second flush in autumn without our help.