Over the years, the wild flower Helianthemum nummularium has been cultivated and hybridised to form many new cultivars with single, semi-double and double flowers ranging from white, yellow, pink to red. These plants have open flowers that are very attractive to bees. These easily become cross pollinated creating more hybrids and therefore it is not uncommon to find chance seedlings that can develop into newly named cultivars. In addition, there are now many forms of foliage ranging from narrow green leaves to wider grey leaves as well as several variegated forms.
There are current over 200 named cultivars of Helianthemum nummularium featured in the RHS Plantfinder, currently just over 100 of these are held in my collection. Each year the collection expands as I manage to locate plants of different cultivars from suppliers here in the UK. New plants are planted out in stock boxes, propagated, photographed as grown here in Hartley, Kent and documented. With the clay soil on a chalk base in North Kent, cultivars may grow slightly differently here compared to other soil types. Rock roses traditionally grew on chalk downs.
Collection List
An up-to-date plant list of my collection can be viewed in this section of the site, either sorted by cultivar name in ascending order or flower colours. This list is continuously updated as some cultivars grow better than others in these conditions and occasionally the odd plant is unfortunately lost.
As seasons pass and month’s progress, the collection plants vary in foliage colour, growth and flowers. Helianthemum’s commonly flower between May and July although it is not unknown for further flowering in the Autumn, providing hard pruning has been carried out after the summer flowering period. Particular cultivars can look very attractive in the winter with their evergreen foliage.
