Skip navigation

• Sustainable Techniques
• Garden Design
• Great Plants
• Gardening for Wildlife
• Wildflower Gardening
• Kitchen Gardening
• Indoor Gardening
• Children's Gardening
• Essays and Opinions
• Puzzles
• Book Reviews
• Urban Gardening
• Garden Botany
• Ecology for Gardeners
• Plant Conservation
• Pest Alerts!
• GreenBridge
  Community Horticulture

Home » Gardening Information » Great Plants

Big-Hearted Brunnera—Foliage and Flowers of Subtle, Sophisticated Beauty

Plants & Gardens News | Volume 23, Number 1 | Spring 2008

by Bob Hyland

Bold foliage in a garden never fails to delight me. That's why I'm a fan of Brunnera macrophylla, a forget-me-not perennial that's made for the shade. This herbaceous plant was named after Samuel Brunner (1790ñ1844), a Swiss botanist who discovered and collected Brunnera macrophylla (first named Anchusa myosotidifolia) in woodlands of the Caucasus region of eastern Europe and northwestern Siberia. One of B. macrophylla's common names is thus Siberian bugloss, with "bugloss" derived from the Greek for "prickly ox-tongue," which aptly connotes the coarse, bristly surface and shape of brunnera foliage. I prefer the alternate common name, heartleaf brunnera, which is inherently more descriptive of the plant and much easier on the tongue.

Brunnera macrophylla, of the borage family (Boraginaceae), is a rhizomatous perennial that colonizes slowly underground to form mounds of rough-textured yet neat cordate (heart-shaped), dark green leaves. Leaf size varies from 2 to 8 inches wide, with larger proportions occurring in moist soils and regions with cool, wet summers. Given time, a planting of heartleaf brunnera forms a dense groundcover of fantastic foliage from 15 to 18 inches tall and wide. It is winter hardy in USDA Zones 3 to 7.

In midspring, delicate sprays of bright sky-blue flowers about 1/4 inch in diameter bloom abundantly on wiry stems above the newly emergent and expanding leaves. Gardeners yearning for near true-blue flowers in the spring landscape will be in heaven. Bloom time is from late April to mid-June, depending on your climate zone. From a distance, heartleaf brunnera flowers can be mistaken for the true garden forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica), a sprawling perennial to biennial wildflower also in the borage family. But on closer inspection, Brunnera macrophylla is easily distinguished by its larger leaves and bolder presence.

Growing Tips

Heartleaf brunnera is a carefree, dependable, deer-resistant workhorse in the shade border. It is easy to grow and spreads at a nice pace with but a few requirements: light to partial shade and moderately fertile, evenly moist, well-drained soil. The green-leafed species will tolerate some degree of dry shade once established, but the variegated cultivars tend to lose their color and pizzazz in hot, dry weather. Gardeners in northern climes (Zones 3 to 4) may be able to grow Brunnera in more open, sunny beds and borders as long as the soils remain evenly moist and plants are sheltered from hot afternoon sun.

Brunnera Cultivars

I love the look and presence of the dark green species' foliage, but I go absolutely bonkers over the recent variegated cultivars of brunnera that have made their way to the marketplace. Cultivars offer wonderful color play and striking leaf patterns guaranteed to enliven the front edges of any shade border. Many have become such staples in our own nursery that we often find it difficult to keep them in stock. Aside from foliage differences, all of the following selections offer tiny, azure-blue flowers in playful lifts above the foliage.

Brunnera macrophylla

'Dawson's White' (syn. 'Variegata')

This stellar cultivar has broadly patterned leaves with irregular snowy-white margins around green centers. Like some of the other cultivars mentioned, the bright white softens to creamy hues in hot, dry summers.

'Hadspen Cream'

English nurseryman Eric Smith selected this cultivar decades ago from plantings at Hadspen House Gardens in Somerset, England. Light green leaves are swirled with irregular creamy-white margins as they emerge and expand in early spring. The color intensifies to vibrant yellow-chartreuse as temperatures rise in May and early June but tends to fade during hot, humid summers. You may occasionally observe some of the leaves reverting to solid green over the course of the growing season; these should be cut out and removed from the crown of the plant.

'Jack Frost'

Introduced to gardens around 2000, 'Jack Frost' makes a brilliant 18-inch-wide clump of frosty-silver leaves. Each leaf is highlighted by a dramatic green edge and a pattern of narrow green veins running through a solid silver background. This award-winning cultivar was first discovered at Walters Gardens in Michigan and has since become a true superstar of the shade garden. 'Jack Frost' made such an impression on me on first discovery that I made its leaf outline the graphic element of my nursery logo.

'Langtrees'

Distinctly different in its variegation, 'Langtrees' sports foliage splashed with neat arcs of stunning silvery-white spots along the leaf edges.

'Looking Glass'

This random sport of 'Jack Frost' hit the marketplace a few years back. 'Looking Glass' offers shimmering, almost solid silver, five-inch heart-shaped leaves with a faint, extremely delicate tracery of green veins. In my opinion, the leaf pattern is not as dramatic as 'Jack Frost', but the silvery foliage literally glows in shade borders.

Note: A few harder-to-find white-flowered Brunnera cultivars exist: 'Betty Bowring', with gray-green leaves, and 'Mr. Morse', sporting silver-washed leaves.

Border Bedfellows

Heartleaf brunnera is extremely effective en masse as a shady groundcover. I also highly recommend it as a companion in mixed borders with shrubs, other perennials, ornamental grasses, spring bulbs, and ephemeral wildflowers. One of my favorite shady compositions consists of Brunnera macrophylla 'Hadspen Cream' planted around the arching stems of Kerria japonica 'Honshu' along with Carex siderosticha 'Variegata' (white-striped sedge) and Narcissus 'Jenny', a cyclamineus daffodil with white, reflexed petals surrounding a slender, pale primrose-yellow cup. The mix of leaf variegations, shapes, and bloom are timed for a perfect spring medley.

Other spring bulbs that accent heartleaf brunnera foliage are Narcissus 'Thalia', with its recurved, pendant white flowers, and N. 'Hawera', a multiflowering naturalizer with small, long-lasting pale canary-yellow blooms. Several minor bulbs also echo the color and timing of the brunnera bloom, among them Scilla siberica (Siberian squill), Muscari armeniacum (grape hyacinth), and Anemone blanda 'Blue Star' (Grecian windflower).

Some spring-blooming perennial companions for heartleaf brunnera I recommend are Sanguinaria canadensis (bloodroot), Anemone sylvestris (snowdrop windflower), and the creamy-white variegated Solomon's seals (Polygonatum × hybridum 'Striatum' or P. odoratum 'Variegatum'). All effectively play off emerging heartleaf brunnera foliage, particularly the silvery-white variegated cultivars. Later in the season, Brunnera looks quite at home amid plantings of big-leafed blue hostas like Hosta sieboldiana 'Elegans' or H. 'Blue Angel' and H. 'Blue Umbrellas'. Brunnera macrophylla 'Hadspen Cream' is a good partner with some of the creamy-yellow-edged hostas like H. 'Abba Daba Do' and H. 'Sagae'.

In fall, Brunnera macrophylla is enlivened in the presence of late-blooming perennials. The single, white-flowering hybrid Japanese anemone (Anemone × hybrida 'Honorine Jobert') is the perfect complement to B. macrophylla 'Dawson's White' or 'Jack Frost'. Purple-leafed bugbanes like Actaea (syn. Cimicifuga) simplex 'Black Negligee' or 'Hillside Black Beauty' with their tall, slender wands of creamy-white, bottle-brush-like flowers also lend Brunneras end-of-the-season support.

Nursery Sources:

---

1000 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225 · 718-623-7200 | Copyright © 2009 BBG
Contact BBG · Directions · Conditions of Use · Privacy Policy · Accessibility Statement · Site Map