Veronica gentianoides Tissington White

Veronica gentianoides 'Tissington White' is a Caucasian speedwell distinguished by its spikes of white flowers finely veined in blue, emerging from a carpet of dark green leaves. This very hardy, carpeting perennial enlivens borders, moist rockeries, and the front of beds in late spring. It is easy-going, content with ordinary soil that remains a little moist in spring.

A species from the Plantaginaceae family, Veronica gentianoides is known by the names Caucasian speedwell or false gentian speedwell. The cultivar 'Tissington White' is a horticultural selection of this species. It is a perennial originating from damp meadows, woodland edges, and damp slopes in Turkey, the Caucasus, Crimea, and north-western Iran. The plant has short rhizomes that allow it to form a dense carpet, without becoming invasive.

'Tissington White' is a cultivar rediscovered in a garden in the village of Tissington, Derbyshire, and then reintroduced into cultivation by the English nursery Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants in the early 1990s. It has been distinguished by the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit for its reliability. Compared to the species, it has significantly larger, much paler, almost white flowers, where the blue veins stand out more. The plant forms a tight cushion 25 to 30 cm high when not in flower, reaching 35 to 45 cm wide after a few years. The leaves, grouped in basal rosettes, are thick, glossy, dark green, ovate to lanceolate, 5 to 8 cm long. The foliage is typically deciduous, but may remain partially in place if the winter is mild. From late May to early July, thin, rigid flowering stems appear, 40 to 50 cm high. They bear narrow spikes composed of numerous small, 1 to 1.5 cm diameter flowers with an almost white corolla finely veined in blue, with dark blue anthers. It is often said that without the rediscovery of this plant in this English village, this delicate Caucasian speedwell might have disappeared from gardens.

Veronica 'Tissington White' is often used at the front of sunny or lightly shaded beds, planted in small, repeated clumps along a path or at the foot of bush roses. It also decorates moist rockeries and not-too-dry gravel gardens. You can pair it with its sisters 'Barbara Sherwood' with sky-blue spikes and 'Variegata' with variegated foliage. In front, place some Geranium macrorrhizum 'White Ness' and clumps of common lady's mantle, for example.