When I first started at Blithewold I wasn’t the biggest fan of heliotrope.  It’s been a Rose Garden staple since way before my time, and I developed an almost instant aversion to it.  I found the fragrance to be so rich and sweet that it felt to me like being wrapped in heavy velvet drapery. – I’ve wondered if it was given its other name, “Cherry Pie”, because of having a sticky-gooey sort of scent.  I was also irritated by the plant’s prickly itchiness and didn’t love that sometimes the leaves turned black and fell off in great handfuls for no apparent reason.

But today as I was spraying our aphid prone cuttings with insecticidal soap, I realized that heliotrope has grown on me.  Maybe it’s the Old Lady in me coming out but I found the powdery scent sort of grandmother soft and comforting.  And I tend to like plants that bite back – like roses, eryngium, cardoons – and just like trying to keep roses black-spot free, I’m almost always up for a challenge.

So I did a little reading today and learned something(s) new.  The word heliotrope literally means  “to follow the sun”.  I told Gail that and she went to see if our plants were actually facing the sun.  Nope.  Heliotrope, alas, is no sunflower.  Evidently it’s one of horticulture’s weird misnomers.  Heliotropium arborescens is a Peruvian native and is capable of growing tree or at least shrubbery sized where hardy.  But it is extremely frost sensitive – it’s one of our canary-in-the-coalmine annuals – we know a light frost has hit when the heliotrope melts.  It is poisonous and irritating to the skin – it definitely causes a bumply itchy rash on contact with my forearms.  And it prefers rich well drained soil but hates being over watered.

We are lucky to have kept stock of a really old fashioned, highly scented variety and we propagate it year after year by cuttings taken towards the end of summer.  We usually use it exclusively and fairly intensely in the Rose Garden but we’re thinking of busting it out of that garden this year and planting it in the Display Garden.  I have a feeling that it will prefer being separated from the roses which love to be drenched as often as possible and it will also be a perfect addition to the bed where our (my) lavender/purple color experiment might take shape…

Have you planted heliotrope in your garden?  Do you keep it at nose level in hanging baskets?  Have you had trouble finding the heavily scented varieties?  Have you ever noticed it following the sun?