Plant profile - Armeria maritima (sea thrift)
Sea thrift always takes us back to holidays on the coast with memories of windswept sand dunes and rocky outcrops. Tolerant of salt and dry soils, sea thrift is distributed throughout the world and is highly popular and valued as a garden plant and a cut flower.
An evergreen perennial, its wiry stems are topped with pink globular flowers but garden varieties can be red, purple or white. You may even notice some of the plants in the wild showing variations in colour due to genetic differences.
Thrift’s adaptation to salty and dry conditions make it a popular choice for xeriscaping, a gardening technique that relies on drought-tolerant plants to reduce the need for irrigation. Green roofs are a good example of this method where plants such as sempervivums, sedums, and ornamental grasses are also added to the mix.
It’s also a great subject for containers. The plants need to be planted into gritty well drained soil, and will soon fill the pot creating a wonderful cushion of springy foliage. An added bonus is a long flowering period. If deadheaded it’s quite possible to have flowers for six months of the year.
There are a number of options when choosing this plant for your garden. ‘Corsica’ has very red flowers while ‘Alba’ is pure white. One tried and tested variety is ‘Vindictive’ which is a particularly compact form with rose-pink flowers but also boasts the RHS award of garden merit.
Thrift was featured on the reverse of the pre-decimal 12 sided threepence coin between 1937 and 1952 and in 2002 sea thrift was chosen as the county flower for the Isles of Scilly by the plant conservation charity plantlife.
