Echium fastuosum

Echium fastuosum, Pride of Madiera, is a vigorous low-growing shrubby Echium with attractive grey-green foliage, woody stems and a multi-branching habit that bears many elongated panicles of deep blue flowers in Spring and throughout the summer. The tiny flowers are a magnet to bees. It grows into a large wide multi-branched shrub.

Echium fastuosom is not fully hardy in many parts of the UK but will grow outdoors in favoured coastal areas of the South-west or in sheltered courtyard gardens within the inner London micro-climate. In other locations, it needs to be grown in large containers and brought in from October until late April or early May. It can be kept in a frost-free conservatory although it does grow large and will need to be cut back after flowering and shaped for its winter indoors. If moved to an unheated glasshouse it should be covered in several layers of fleece. In very cold inland areas it may need heat during long periods of sub-zero temperatures to preserve all the foliage but frost-damaged foliage can be cut back easily and the plant quickly puts on new growth from the woody stems.