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Tuesday 15 March 2011

Good plant #26 - Gunnera Manicata

For me, this is the king of jungle perennial plants.  The leaves are humungous - 3ft plus!. This is not a plant for the faint hearted and it needs a huge amount of space.  It is said to be frost hardy but needs a bit of winter protection.  In my experience of the winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11 in South Manchester, young plants are not hardy even with winter protection.  In view of this, for the first couple of years, I would suggest you grow it in a giant pot, cutting the leaves back in autumn, fully protecting the crown with a garden fleece and when the temperature drops below freezing, bringing it indoors/ putting it in a greenhouse.  Once the plant is mature, I expect winter protection will be enough.

This plant needs moist and fertile soil.  It's a bog plant.  If you do grow it in a pot at first add plenty of pre-watered, water retaining crystals to the soil-based compost along with additional fertilizer.  I have used chicken poo pellets or manure as the fertlizer.

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