Lunaria Annua Chedglow

Rarely offered from seed, this unusual eye-catching Honesty has chocolate coloured leaves with attractive lilac flowers on dark purple stems followed by decorative ‘penny’ seed heads with translucent discs which are useful in flower arrangements.

How to Grow Lunaria from Seed

Honesty is an old fashioned, dual-purpose plant, grown both for its bright, fragrant flowers and for its unmistakeable translucent silver seed-heads.

Lunaria, or Honesty, blooms in rich shades of, purples, pinks and bi-coloured combinations and is a popular plant with the bees and butterflies. Over the season it produces masses of silvery pods that look spectacular in the bleak winter garden.

Flower arrangers cut the pod bearing stems during a dry spell in September or October and hang them upside down in a warm place until perfectly dry then gently remove the outer seed casing before using them for floral decorations.

Lunaria is properly grown as a biennial, and makes large, well-branched plants in its second year. However, smaller plants can be grown as hardy annuals from an early sowing. This method produces a smaller flower display, but achieves excellent, compact seed-heads.

In spring or summer, Honesty seeds can be sown directly where they are to grow or they can be sown in trays, on seed compost, covered with grit and kept in a warm, light place.

Sow thinly in drills 3mm deep and 30cm apart. Keep the soil damp until germination takes place and if the seedlings become crowded, thin out to 15cm spacings.

Alternatively, for indoor propagation, sow the large seeds individually into 4 inch pots or growing modules – where they can develop and be planted out without root disturbance. Honesty develops thick storage roots, almost like tubers, and has deep tap roots. Keeping Lunaria in pots for any length of time prevents the roots developing properly.

Prepare the planting hole with plenty of good home-made compost or leaf-mould. Plant out when all frosts have gone.