Garden phlox 'Ingeborg från Nybro'

Phlox paniculata ’Ingeborg från Nybro’

Description: This garden phlox variety has small, white flowers with purple eye. The flowers have a subtle, pleasant fragrance. The foliage is dark green and the leaves are covered with fine hair on both the upper and lower side.

Height: 90 cm

Bloom time: At the trial cultivation at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp in the south of Sweden, this variety has been in bloom for about four weeks, starting in late June.

Bloom colour: The flowers are white with a purple eye in the middle.

History: This garden phlox originates from a small croft in the woods, but has been growing in a modern private garden since the 1970s. This variety, 'Ingeborg från Nybro' (Ingeborg from Nybro), is named after the woman who cultivated it for more than thirty years, and who made sure to preserve it for posterity.

Ingeborg was born in the early 1900s. She worked as a housekeeper and was a skilled cook. The tip concerning this variety was sent in by Mary-Ann, whose parents lived next door to Ingeborg for several years in the city of Nybro. In the 1970s, Mary Ann's parents received several plants from Ingeborg. The plants she and her mother had collected from the mother's childhood home in a woodland area close to the village of Orrefors. Ingeborg’s grandfather was a forester, and older inhabitants of Orrefors remember that already in the early 1940s, the forester’s cottage was surrounded by beautiful plants. The cottage was sold in the early 1950s, and Ingeborg probably collected divisions of the plants there sometime in the 1930s, shortly after she and her mother moved into their house in Nybro. Today the cottage is deserted and no garden plants remain. Ingeborg’s house in Nybro was demolished in the 1970s and Ingeborg moved into a flat, but the plants from the forester’s cottage were left at Mary-Ann's parents. Mary-Ann tells us that Ingeborg wanted to spread the plants from her grandparents' cottage so that they would continue to be cultivated. Mary-Ann herself has grown the garden phlox and the other plants that her parents received since the 1990s, when she took over her parents' garden.

Collected in: Nybro in Småland in the south of Sweden.

How to grow garden phlox: Garden phlox prefers a nutritious and moist, but well-drained, soil. It thrives in full sun or light shade. The bloom time is extended if faded flowers are deadheaded.

Where can I see this variety in cultivation? The variety can be seen in Landeriträdgården at Gothenburg Botanical Garden.

Sale: The variety can be purchased at nurseries and garden centres from spring 2013.

Poster: Here you can download a poster of garden phlox 'Ingeborg från Nybro'. Poster