Helianthemum Wisley Primrose - Rock Rose

The 'Wisley Primrose' Helianthemum is a vigorous hybrid rock rose that has proven itself. It forms a lovely ground cover, with light, pastel yellow flowers, resembling crumpled silk, particularly generous in spring and summer. This sub-shrub has persistent and fuzzy foliage, silver-grey in colour, very attractive. Perfectly hardy and relatively drought-resistant, it will brighten up rockeries, borders, and sunny beds, in light soil.

Belonging to the Cistus family, the Helianthemum is similar to Cistus. The 'Wisley Primrose' Helianthemum is one of the most famous hybrids, commonly found in horticulture, between the Helianthemum apenninum, native to southern Europe, and the Helianthemum mummularium, widespread in Europe and Turkey. Like its ancestors, 'Wisley Primrose' loves limestone and rocky soils and sunlight, and forms a low, spreading, and dense sub-shrub, with a cushion-like appearance, reaching a height and width of 20 to 30cm (8 to 12in). Its evergreen to semi-evergreen foliage, composed of small linear, opposite, silver-grey, and cottony leaves, enhances its abundant and bright pale yellow flowering. From May to August, it is covered with a multitude of small cup-shaped flowers, 3cm (1in) in diameter, with five petals, adorned with a bouquet of golden stamens.

Helianthemum means "sunflower" in Greek, an appropriate name for these flowers that only open in bright sunlight. Its delicate little flowers only last a few days, but they constantly renew themselves throughout the summer, and even into autumn.

The Helianthemum is the ideal plant to enhance a rocky garden, a sunny slope, cascading over a wall, or in paving... It will also have a beautiful effect in the foreground of perennial beds or raised flower beds. It also thrives when grown in pots or containers on terraces. It is perfect for creating green walls and green roofs. It can be combined with many other rock plants (Erigeron, Shrubby Potentilla, Shrubby Stock), as well as perennial plants such as Lavender, German Iris, Cistus, Helenium, Convolvulus cneorum, Coreopsis, Agapanthus. Its flowers blend delicately with the grey foliage of stachys, artemisias, and ballotes.