I have a favourite fuchsia called “Cotton Candy”. It’s a lovely flower that has a cream-white frilly skirt and  candy-pink flushed outer petals. The stamens are a contrasting dark pink that is also carried in the young stems and leaf veins. There are loads of fuchsias will all sorts of colour combinations available but I find the colouring of this one particularly delicate.

Its delicacy is put even more into context when you realise that it’s borderline herbaceous and returns very late in the season, right at the end of summer, about the start of September. It starts budding and has to grow, feed, flower and set seed all before the frosts hit in December, just a couple of months away. I’ve seen this flowering when it’s been almost buried under an early snowfall and somehow, it just about manages to survive.

I’ve taken several cuttings of this fuchsia each year as it returns and I’ll be doing the same this year too. They take very easily but I need to do them soon though, while there is still a smidgen of warmth and they’ll over-winter in one of the green houses.