This is an outtake from yesterday’s Chalky Pastel Flowers post. Not because it forgot its words or slipped on something, I hasten to add – I decided that it didn’t help my contention. It was too maroon.
Although the band and thin stripes decorating these scalloped bells would have qualified as chalky, and the flowers do pale to a lovely antique pink as they age, there’s more to this story. The ribbed buds, the debonaire green flower ‘caps’, the purple stems and tinges on the foliage, the long bell shape with its parabolic edge… if somebody told me one of these flowers had won a Nobel Prize for something and asked me to guess which one, I’d have no hesitation in pointing to the campanula.
I’ve never seen an unruly specimen, so far as I can remember, and although it’s well loved by plant collectors, it’s not common. Given the nice contrasts with the grass, the bronze foliage plant, blue thistles and achillea provided at the Tatton Park Flower Show, I thought this would make a worthy choice for my flower of the day.
Susan Rushton 
A striking and unusual plant, certainly, but I think I prefer the blue campanulas.
One of the ones I like to see flowering is C. lactiflora but you need a big area for it. I’ve seen it looking great at Harlow Carr and Trentham gardens where they have drifts of it.