Helianthemum Mixture - Rock Rose

With their small cistus-like appearance, the Helianthemums of this mix bear adorable rose, lemon, copper, red, purple, and white flowers from May to July, depending on the plants. These evergreen undershrubs are very floriferous and form delightful ground covers. Their evergreen foliage, ranging from green to grey-green-silver, provides a beautiful backdrop to their flowering. They thrive in sunny borders and rockeries, cascading over a low wall or between the stones of a pathway.

Belonging to the Cistaceae family, the helianthemums in this lovely collection come from two botanical species, Helianthemum apenninum, native to southern Europe, and H. mummularium, widespread in Europe and Turkey. Like their ancestors, they love calcareous, rocky, and sandy soils, as well as full sun. Without these conditions, they do not flower and will wither. Helianthemum forms a low, spreading, cushion-like, dense undershrub, 25cm (10in) tall and 30 to 35cm (12 to 14in) wide. Its foliage is evergreen to semi-evergreen, depending on the climate. It is composed of small linear leaves that differ in appearance depending on the plants in the mix we offer. Their colour ranges from dark green to silver-grey. It highlights an abundant and bright flowering in various colours, either solid or bicoloured. From May to August, it is covered with a multitude of small cup-shaped flowers, 3cm (1in) in diameter, with five crumpled petals adorned with a bouquet of golden stamens.

Helianthemum is the ideal plant to enhance a rocky garden, a sunny embankment, in the stones of a pathway, or cascading over a wall. It also looks stunning at the front of perennial beds or raised flower beds. It is suitable for cultivation in pots or containers on patios. It can be used to create green walls and green roofs. It can be associated with other rockery plants (erigeron, shrubby potentilla, shrubby wallflower), as well as perennial plants such as lavender, Iris germanica, cistus, helenium, Convolvulus cneorum and C. sabatius, coreopsis, creeping thyme, and rosemary. Its flowers blend delicately with the grey foliage of stachys, dwarf artemisia, and silver basket (cineraria).