Globe Thistle
Echinops ritro 'Veitch's Blue'
“Architectural, bee-beloved, and they dry like a dream. 'Veitch's Blue' is the answer to every 'my garden needs more structure' question.”
— ROSIE
Rosie's Take
Globe thistles are the kind of flower that makes you realise how much of flower arranging is just about having the courage to use something unexpected. Those perfect spheres of steely blue, sitting on top of stiff, silvery stems — they look like something an architect designed, not something that grew in a border.
'Veitch's Blue' is the variety I grow, and the colour is magnificent. A deep, metallic blue that's almost violet in certain light, cooling to steel-grey as the flowers mature. It's the kind of blue that stops people mid-conversation. In a mixed border with grasses and rudbeckia, the contrast is electric.
Bees are obsessed with them, which is another reason to grow them. On a warm July afternoon, each globe is covered in bumblebees working their way systematically around the sphere. Stand near a clump of echinops in summer and the sound is extraordinary — this low, contented hum that makes the whole garden feel alive.
They dry perfectly. Cut them just before the flowers fully open and hang them upside down, and they'll hold that spherical shape and that blue-grey colour for months. I have dried echinops in a jug on my mantlepiece from last summer and they still look intentional. Mixed with dried sea holly and honesty seed heads, they're my favourite winter arrangement — proof that flowers don't end when the garden does.
Where to Buy
If you want to try globe thistle for yourself, here's where I'd point you:
✿ From the folklore cabinet
The name 'echinops' comes from the Greek for hedgehog — 'echinos' — because the spiky flower heads resemble a rolled-up hedgehog. The Romans used a related species as a remedy for snakebite, which I'd take with a healthy pinch of salt. In the language of flowers, globe thistles represent independence and austerity, which feels about right for a plant that thrives in the poorest, driest soil you can offer it and looks better for the struggle.
