Eryngium 'Silver Salentino'

Enjoy the frosty-cool colour and form of Eryngium 'Silver Salentino' through summer, autumn and winter. This hardy and resilient perennial has so much to offer in terms of architectural impact, and the spiky, upright structure keeps on giving long after the flowers have faded, leaving behind snowflake-like seedheads which sparkle with frost in the winter sun. With its spikey bracts and thistle-like flowers, Eryngium 'Silver Salentino' brings a touch of originality wherever it’s planted. Energising planting schemes with its cool silvery colouring, it grows into a statuesque plant, rapidly putting on growth in late spring and early summer each year to produce stems up to about 1m high. Each stem of this white sea holly is topped with a constellations of starry white buds. These open up into fascinating ball-shaped flowers with a pearly patina, surrounded by jagged silver bracts.

Very attractive to pollinating insects, Eryngium planum 'Silver Salentino' flowers keep coming through summer, and even after the show is over, this plant provides a beautiful, almost ethereal presence to the winter garden with its enduring seedheads. It’s a drought-tolerant plant, its thick grey-green foliage designed to minimise water loss. Place it in the sun, where its reflective colouring will shimmer, lighting up your borders. Eryngium 'Silver Salentino' is tolerant of some of the toughest sites, including those with salt-laden coastal winds and sandy or stony free-draining soil. Perfect in gravel areas or Mediterranean planting schemes, it needs little care once it’s settled in and looks right at home blended with other drought-tolerant plants such as salvia, echinops, sedum and euphorbia.