I don’t know how I have missed ‘Dragon Heart’, an eye-catching hardy geranium that has been on the market for the last several years at least. It grabbed me–almost literally–at a garden center, as it sprawled from a quart pot in the half -off aisle. The blossoms are bright magenta-purple, with dramatic dark centers and veining. They are the typical five-petaled shape characteristic of hardy geraniums, the perennial relatives of the well-loved window box pelargoniums that go by the common name, “geranium.”
‘Dragon Heart’ is what is known to botanists as an “interspecies hybrid,” meaning that two hardy geranium species, in this case Geranium psilostemon and Geraniam procurrens, were crossed to create hybrid offspring. ‘Dragon Heart’ was evidently one of the best of those progeny. The breeder who acted as facilitator/midwife in this act of deliberate horticultural hanky panky was Alan Bremner, who lives on the Scottish island of Orkney. Cranesbills are one of his specialties and as of 2008 he had produced forty named varieties from his various interspecies crosses. Among his other successes are little pink-purple ‘Dilys’ and the similarly colored, dark-centered ‘Anne Thomson’.
‘Dragon Heart’ is distinguished by its large flowers and sprawling habit. It can grow up to two feet tall and wide. It is a good garden plant however, and weaves it way through neighboring plants rather than attempting to dominate them.
Now that I have found ‘Dragon Heart’, I am going to make it my business to invest in more Bremner hybrids. To find out more about Alan Bremner, go to the excellent 2008 at profile in the RHS magazine “The Plantsman.” It is available at http://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/RHS-Publications/Journals/The-Plantsman/2008-issues/September/Bremner.