Look on my works, ye mites, and despair!*

We are inordinately proud here at Dolores Delargo Towers of the vast and magnificent collection of Fuchsias we have amassed in only a few years - 54 named varieties so far, and many duplicates/cuttings thereof. This year, we covered the entire wall and fence at the foot of the garden with troughs and hanging pots full of the buggers; many more are gathered together en masse in pots and troughs all around the extensive gardens...

True to form, a beast arrived this year to taunt our ambition to cover the world in glorious pinks, purples, reds and mauves - the Fuchsia Gall Mite.

Commonly known round these parts by the "scientific" name Yewutter bastardii, it has decided that our gardens are particularly to its liking, given the profusion of its chosen food plant - and we can only watch as it gnarls and cankers its way through our collection.

This was a particularly lovely recent addition in 2017, Jack Shahan, here pictured in early July:



...and this is what the mites have done to it!



The pattern is repeated - to a greater and lesser degree - all over. Some varieties appear to be completely unscathed (so far), however - among them old "garden favourites" and cultivars with sturdy parentage such as [l-r below] Paula Jane, Delta's Sara, Elfriede Ott and Lady Boothby:



It would appear that our dramatic, massively blousy-flowered "Southern Belles" varieties (such as Bella Rosella, Annabelle, Voodoo, Quasar, Deep Purple and Pink Marshmallow) may have shrugged it off, as has the tiny-flowered Foolke and the species Fuchsias such as Thalia, but "dead common" supermarket-shelf varieties such as Display, Mrs Popple, Marinka and Eva Boerg are ravaged. Which is odd.

Worse yet, according to the RHS and the British Fuchsia Society, there is currently no effective remedy. The only spray that was available - abamectin & thiamethoxam - has been banned by (guess who?) the EU. No currently available garden pesticides appear to work. Some predatory mites may have success in keeping down the populations but a) they're very expensive; and b) there is no guarantee they will do the job. So we are faced with the prospect of a "Fuchsia massacre" - the only way of ridding the plant of the problem is to prune it, and in doing so we risk losing branches with otherwise unaffected flowers...

So much for trying to create a glorious collection of one of nature's most beautiful garden flowers.

I could scream.

Download The British Fuchsia Society guide to Fuchsia Gall Mite [PDF]

[* apologies for the extraordinarily poor pun on the classic work by Mr Shelley]