How to Winterize Foxglove 'Pam's Choice'

Overview

Pam's choice foxgloves are one of the most striking foxgloves available to gardeners. With 3-to-4 foot flower spikes and creamy white flowers with solid, and sometimes spotted, burgundy to purple throats, these flowers stand out wherever they are planted. Pam's choice foxgloves are a biennial plant. This means they produce foliage their first year, flower and set seed their second year and then die. You can prolong the life of your Pam's choice foxglove by removing flower spikes as soon as flowers begin to fade. Doing this will give you a short lived perennial that will produce flowers for another three or four years.

Step 1

Cut flower spikes back to the crown after the flowers start to fade. Doing so will encourage Pam's choice foxglove to behave as a perennial rather than a biennial.

Step 2

Mulch the crown of the plant (the rosette of leaves) with 2 to 3 inches of compost (apply under the leaves) after removing flower spikes (mid summer). For first-year plants (plants that have not produced flower spikes that year), mulch with 2 to 3 inches of compost in mid-to-late summer.

Step 3

Cover basal rosettes with 3 to 4 inches of straw after the first hard frost of fall.

Step 4

Pull straw away from the crown on warm, sunny winter days when the temperature is higher than 40 degrees F. Re-apply the straw mulch if nighttime temperatures will drop below freezing.

Step 5

Remove plants that have set seeds as soon as the flower spikes start to brown and wilt. These plants will not survive the winter and will need to be replaced.