Angelo Bellacasa, grows the lovely blue, bell-like flowers Campanula medium. This campanula isa biennial from Southern Europe. It is planted each year in the same way as a hardy annual. Seeds must be sown each summer to provide blooms every season. Angelo Dellacasa started his seed in April, 2008 and set the plants out in the garden in October of last year. Our picture was taken about the first of June.
Some gardeners start the seed early in the year so the plant will flower the first year from seed but even so the plant produce far more profusely and the flowers are more handsome the second year from summer sown seed. The ideal time to sow bell-flower seed is July. The seedlings can be transplanted to an other flat in September and winfired over in the flat as they do on colder climates or libe Dellacasa, you may set them out in the garden in October. If your garden gets much frost we would suggest a light mulch around the plants as a frost protection.
We have found campanulas are more beautiful if they are given protection from the afternoon sun and some varieties, like C. isophylla will be more handsome if given high shade all the time. They are not too particular as to soil so long as it is well drained but here again we find the plants fuller and taller when a generous mount of humus material is worked into the soil where they are to grow.
Campanula medium is listed in some Catalogs as both an annual and a biennial. The annual form blooms in five to six months from seed. It will neither be as tall as the biennial form nor will the flowers be as large and handsome but it is quite satisfactory.
The Dellacasa Canterbury bells are both single and double. The single variety has bell or urn-shaped flowers that are held upright in loose, open clusters. The double variety, popularly called, “cup-and-saucer” has a colored calyx, like a saucer, below the cup-shaped corolla.
The Canterbury Bells come in purple, Violet, blue, lavender, Pink and White. Most seed racks offer only mixed colors but some seed catalogs offers the Cup-and-saucer variety in dark blue, white, rose and mixed colors. Occasionally nurseries are able to get separate color from bedding plant growers if they put their orders in fair enough in advance.
Campanula isophylla also known as the Italian bellflower and Star of Bethlehem, is a lovely little trailing plant that makes a delightful hanging basket, top of wall and rock garden plant. Flowers are pale blue (variety Alba has white flowers) about an inch in diameter and completely cover the plant in late summer to early fall. Campanula persicifolia, the peach – leafed bluebell, grows two to three feet tall and has open cup-shaped blossoms about an inch in diameter. The variety ‘Telham Beauty’ has three inch blue flowers that are exceedingly lovely. This is a very choice plant for borders and like the Canterbury bells it is a good cut flower.
http://www.arhomeandgarden.org/plantoftheweek/articles/Canterbury_Bells.htm
