Why Foxgloves Belong in Every British Garden and How to Keep Them Coming

There's a particular moment in a British garden, usually sometime in late June, when you look up from whatever you were actually supposed to be doing and notice that the foxgloves have peaked. They're at the top of their game: tall, unhurried, each spike carrying thirty or forty florets in descending stages of opening, the lower ones already fading to a papery whisper while the uppermost buds are still tightly closed and hopeful. If you're growing the wild Digitalis purpurea, the interior of each floret is spotted with a ring of dark maroon markings on a cream ground, markings so precisely arranged they look almost deliberate. They are deliberate, of course, in an evolutionary sense, guiding bumblebees straight to the pollen. But knowing that doesn't make the spectacle any less beautiful.

The trouble is, this moment passes. And then people make the mistake of assuming the foxglove has passed with it.

Understanding the biennial lifecycle before you do anything else

Most gardeners know, in a general way, that foxgloves are biennials. What they sometimes don't fully internalise is what that means in practice, and what it demands of you if you want them year after year rather than as an occasional visitor.

A biennial completes its life in two growing seasons. In the first year, the seed germinates, and the plant puts all its energy into a low rosette of broad, slightly felted leaves. There are no flowers. Nothing much seems to be happening. If you're new to growing them, this is the stage where impatience becomes the enemy: a perfectly healthy foxglove seedling in its first year looks, to the untrained eye, like a plant that is failing. It isn't. It's building root mass and gathering strength for what comes next.

In its second year, the rosette produces a flower spike that can reach anywhere from 90cm to nearly two metres depending on the conditions, the variety, and frankly how much the plant has decided to commit. It flowers, sets seed prolifically, and then it dies. That is the deal. The foxglove is not dying prematurely; it has simply finished what it came to do.

The practical consequence is this: if you sow foxgloves only once and don't manage self-seeding or succession, you will have a stunning display one summer and bare earth the next. The solution isn't complicated, but it does require a small shift in how you think about the plant.

Getting continuity without a spreadsheet

The simplest way to keep foxgloves in the garden year after year is to let them self-seed and resist the urge to tidy up too aggressively in late summer. A mature foxglove spike carries thousands of seeds in small brown capsules, and if you allow a few spikes to ripen fully before cutting them, those seeds will distribute themselves across nearby soil. By September you'll often find a scatter of tiny seedling rosettes establishing in the surrounding beds, and those are your next year's flowers.

There's a catch, and it's a minor one. Foxgloves self-seed where they want to, not necessarily where you want them. In my own garden, they have a particular affection for the narrow strip between the raised bed and the path, a spot that makes not the slightest practical sense, and a deep suspicion of the actually rather lovely shaded border I prepared specifically with them in mind. You learn to work with this. Move seedlings in early autumn when the soil is still warm enough for them to establish before the ground stiffens, handling the rosette carefully and replanting without disturbing the roots more than necessary.

If you'd rather have more control over placement, or if your soil has a tendency to get waterlogged over winter and you're losing seedlings to rot, try collecting seed directly from the spike. Wait until the capsules are dry and papery, hold a paper bag beneath the spike, and strip them off with your fingers. The seed will be very fine and very numerous. Sow it in small trays or modules from late spring through to June, cover very lightly with compost (barely a dusting; these seeds need light to germinate well), and keep them somewhere cool and bright. Don't expect fast results: foxglove germination can be erratic, and a fortnight of patient waiting is perfectly normal.

Where they actually thrive

Foxgloves have a reputation for tolerating shade, which is true, but the fuller picture is that they prefer dappled shade or a position that receives morning sun and afternoon shelter. They're a plant of woodland edges in the wild, and that ecology tells you something useful. They want light to germinate and enough warmth to flower well, but they don't love harsh afternoon sun baking them from the south. A north-facing or east-facing border, a spot under a tall deciduous shrub, the shaded side of a wall, all of these suit them well.

On the question of soil, foxgloves are genuinely accommodating. They'll grow in clay soil, which eliminates them from none of the heavier Surrey gardens I've gardened in or visited over the years. Clay does need to be free-draining enough not to sit waterlogged through winter, since that's more likely to kill a first-year rosette than the cold itself. A little grit worked into the planting area helps. In light sandy soil they grow equally well but may need more moisture through dry spells; foxgloves shouldn't be allowed to wilt through the summer of their second year or flowering will be curtailed.

One place they'll always struggle is an exposed, windy position. The flower spikes are tall and not especially stout, and in an open garden without shelter they'll bend and snap before they've had a chance to be admired. Stake them if you must, though in my experience placing them where they have a wall, hedge, or other tall planting for company is more effective and considerably less labour.

On the named varieties: are they worth it?

Here's a view someone might reasonably argue with: I think the wild Digitalis purpurea is usually more beautiful than its named cultivars, and in a naturalistic planting there's really no contest.

But that's not the whole story.

The named varieties and series do useful things. The 'Camelot' series, bred for sturdy spikes and good weather resistance, can be a better choice in an exposed position. The 'Dalmatian' series produces plants that sometimes flower in their first year when sown early under cover, which cuts out the biennial wait entirely and makes foxgloves genuinely manageable for impatient gardeners or those with short-term planting schemes. The apricot shades available in 'Sutton's Apricot' and similar selections are genuinely lovely in a warm-toned border, and they have the gentle quality of feeling almost wild while still being something a little unexpected.

The creamy white forms, whether the cultivar 'Alba' or simply white-flowered seedlings selected from a species population, are among the most versatile garden plants I know. They work in every context: beside deep purple alliums that are still standing in early July, at the back of a border packed with roses, in the shadier sections of a kitchen garden where the planting can otherwise look a little flat.

Worth knowing: named varieties often don't come true from self-sown seed. If you're growing a specific colour-selected form and you want to maintain it, you'll need to sow fresh named seed each year rather than relying on what the plant deposits itself. Allowing them to cross-pollinate freely produces beautiful, variable offspring, mostly in purples and pinks with occasional whites, but not reliably the original named colour. If that unpredictability bothers you, be disciplined about deadheading all but the plants you want to seed from, and collect seed from those specifically.

A few things worth doing before August is out

If your foxgloves have finished flowering this summer and you haven't yet decided what to do with the spent spikes, now is the moment to think about it. Leave the spikes you want to seed from intact and allow the capsules to ripen. You'll know they're ready when the spike has dried to a pale biscuit colour and the capsules crumble easily between your fingers. Cut these down once they've seeded, or collect the seed as described above.

Foxglove plants that have flowered will sometimes produce lateral shoots from the base after the main spike is cut, smaller secondary spikes that flower modestly and extend the season by a few weeks. These won't be as impressive as the main event, but they're worth leaving. The plant is finished after this, and there's no benefit to trying to keep it going; pull it up once those secondary spikes have also died back and use the space for a young rosette or something else altogether.

Check around the base of any parent plant that seeded freely. If seedling rosettes are already visible, which in a warm summer they may well be by late July, decide now whether you'll move them, leave them where they are, or pot them up for planting out in autumn. They'll need to be in their final position before the cold really sets in, giving them a month or more of growing weather to anchor themselves properly. A well-established rosette going into winter will reward you far more generously than one that was moved too late and spent its first winter sulking.

Foxgloves aren't demanding companions. They ask for patience, a little restraint with the tidying, and the willingness to work with their habit rather than against it. Do that, and they'll quietly, persistently, make themselves at home.