Erica cinerea Rosa Bella - Bell Heather

Erica cinerea 'Rosa Bella' is a hardy undershrub and one of the most beautiful varieties there is, with its hundreds of small fuchsia pink bells emerging from a prostrate tuft with fine dark green foliage. It is an improvement on the variety 'Atrosanguinea', and even more vigorous and floriferous. The flowering is long, from July to October, heralding the arrival of autumn. It forms an evergreen cushion with a very natural appearance, and is a plant of dry slopes and light woods, requiring acidic and well-drained soil to thrive.

Erica cinerea 'Rosa Bella' belongs to the Ericaceae family, it is an English selection of the wild form Erica cinerea, native to western Europe, where it grows in heathlands and siliceous woods. This plant is very common in France. The 'Rosa Bella' cultivar forms a low and dense bush, with prostrate and tortuous growth, reaching a height of 35 cm (14in), with a spread of 45 cm (18in). The rigid, low and spreading tips of its twisted branches straighten up, revealing an ashy and pubescent bark, covered in tiny dark green linear leaves, glabrous. Its small bell-shaped flowers, a very vivid pink, measure from 4 to 5 mm (0in) in length and are grouped in small elongated clusters, at the top of leafy stems. They appear in the middle of summer and last until October, and are highly visited by bees. The evergreen foliage is dark green and glossy, turning slightly bronze in autumn.

The 'Rosa Bella' heather will find its place in a peaty rockery, in non-burning sun, accompanied by other heathers whose flowering will take over afterwards. To add a touch of fancy, they can be mixed with some grasses that will lighten their mass: Deschampsia cespitosa 'Northern Lights', Deschampsia flexuosa 'Tatra Gold', Molinia caerulea 'Variegata'. They can also be mixed in a low and shaded bed with azaleas, bearberry, cassiope or Lithodora fruticosa. Heathers form beautiful carpets at the base of larger shrubs—mountain laurels, rhododendrons, brooms, deciduous azaleas—which also appreciate acidic soil. Erica cinerea is also a medicinal plant, used for its antiseptic and diuretic properties.

While heathers and in particular the genus Erica are associated with the humid Atlantic heaths of the oceanic north facade (Brittany, Ireland, Scotland), there are also heathers from dry climates and limestone soils, Mediterranean ones. But one of the richest areas in heather is located far away, in South Africa. In the Cape region, there is a vegetation formation on acidic soil, equivalent to our Mediterranean scrub vegetation, the Fynbos, which includes nearly 625 heather species out of the 740 that exist in the world.