Blooms on my comfrey (photo by author)

Garden

Humphrey the Comfrey

A beautiful and useful plant for the garden

In 2021 I located a comfrey plant to put into my garden. Monty Don from BBC’s Gardener’s World is a big fan of comfrey as it makes a very good liquid compost for your plants (if you can get past the smell as it brews).

You can also harvest the leaves, chop them up and use them as mulch around your plants, which is my plan for my comfrey, which I have named Humphrey since it rhymes with comfrey and makes it easier to remember what the plant is actually called.

Russian Comfrey (Symphytum × uplandicum) cultivar called Bocking 14 (photo by author)

The comfrey has taken to the raised bed I put it in. I haven’t split the plant yet, I will do that either this fall or early next spring so I can have two, if not three comfreys in my garden. It depends on how big the crown has gotten by then.

I love the flower buds as they are getting ready, such a beautiful shade of red on the bright green stems.

Flower buds on the comfrey (photo by author)

Alas, this variety of comfrey is sterile, so the flowers won’t have viable seeds and it was all for not. But is very popular with the bees and that is good.

The spent flowers of the comfrey (photo by author)

I love the leaves, the bright green, and the wonderful patterns the veins make.

Close-up view of a comfrey leaf (photo by author)

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