Heuchera / Heucherella
Heuchera
Grown for leaf color more than flower, and that color depends on getting the light exactly half right.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Purple and burgundy · Bronze, red and brown
- Flower color
- White
- Sunlight
- Partial shade; full sun scorches the leaves, and deep shade dulls the color.
- Watering
- Moist but well-drained, and never waterlogged.
- Feeding
- Compost mulch in spring, with a light liquid feed for plants in pots.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Take off the spent flower stems, and tidy dead leaves away in spring.
- Mar–May Spring Growth
- May–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 15.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 15.7 in
- Between rows
- 19.7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Clumping rhizomes
- Working depth
- 6–16 in
- Can reach
- 24 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 16–24 in across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 10 in of soil
The clump widens a little each year from a shallow rhizome that likes to sit at or just under the surface. When the middle goes bare and woody, lift the whole thing, keep the young outer pieces and throw the centre away.
The woody crown lifts itself out of the soil a little more each year until the plant is standing on a stem and rocks loose in frost. Lift it every two or three springs, cut the old woody base off and replant the crown deeper.
The habit is Heuchera / Heucherella’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Vine weevil
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Vine weevil
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Vine weevil
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Vine weevil
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
Hostas, Ferns, Astilbe, Tiarella
Flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com