Campanula
Kent Belle
“The bellflower with real presence. 'Kent Belle' has weight, colour, and a quiet drama that most cottage garden plants can only dream of.”
— ROSIE
Rosie's Take
There's a particular shade of violet-blue that only bellflowers seem to manage — deeper than lavender, richer than cornflower, with a kind of luminous intensity that makes everything around it look slightly washed out. Campanula 'Kent Belle' has it in spades. Those long, pendulous bells hanging in clusters from arching stems, each one a perfect elongated teardrop of saturated blue-violet. They catch the light and almost glow.
I love the weight of them. Most campanulas are delicate, papery things — pretty but insubstantial. 'Kent Belle' has presence. The bells are large, fleshy, and they swing in the breeze with a satisfying heft. The whole plant grows to about three feet, which means it sits in the middle of a border and quietly outperforms everything around it from June to August.
They're wonderful with foxgloves and delphiniums if you want a spire-and-bell combination that looks like a cottage garden painting. Or thread them through old roses where that blue-violet makes the pinks sing. I've also seen them planted along the base of a warm wall where they get that reflected heat and just keep flowering.
As a cut flower, the stems are strong enough to hold their own in a jug. I pick them when the bottom bells are fully open and the top ones are still in bud — you get a lovely progression of colour up the stem, from deep blue at the base to tight, pale buds at the tip. They last about a week in water, which for a flower this generous is more than fair.
Where to Buy
If you want to try campanula for yourself, here's where I'd point you:
✿ From the folklore cabinet
Campanula means 'little bell' in Latin, which is about as straightforward as botanical naming gets. In folklore, bellflowers were associated with fairies — ringing the bells was said to summon them, though some traditions warned that hearing a campanula ring meant death was near. I prefer the fairy version. 'Kent Belle' is a hybrid raised in Kent, predictably enough, and it's a cross between the robust Campanula latifolia and the graceful C. takesimana. It got the best of both parents.
