Description
Many years ago I was privileged to be taken to the garden of the late Frank Waley at Sevenoaks in Kent, by a good friend and colleague, the late Michael Hoog of Haarlem. There, Frank was slowly gifting away a magnificent collection of plants collected over decades, as he anticipated that his garden (and its acres of self-seeding Narcissus, especially N.cyclamineus) would eventually be developed for housing. Sadly this later happened and the garden was destroyed.
One of the plants that he passed on to Michael and myself that day was his Bluebell – ‘Wavertree‘, which was named after his house and magnificent garden, which was called Wavertree (the clonal name has nothing whatsoever to do with the Liverpool suburb of the same name).
Wavertree was selected for the particular blue colouration of its flowers. The stock is a clone, it was originally just a single bulb, so the display is even and this is the true English Bluebell, not a hybrid, but pure, clonal and English Hyacinthoides non-scripta (i.e. without any Spanish-bluebell genes). It has never been brought on from seed and thus has no accidental hybrid progeny, indeed seedlings are not entitled to the name.
It is an excellent plant, which does very well here planted out, with no special attention (though for the record it grows in our natural, circum-neutral, sandy soil, very well). This has a perfect pedigree and is a happy memory of a very fine plantsman, Frank Waley.
