I was once upon a time in love / obsessed with Cannas, I have had quite a large collection of Cannas, over the years I filtered out many that did not perform well or struggled to survive our European climate! I even turned to breeding, now though I only gaze lovingly towards them, what I have now is a very small but perfectly formed collection of Cannas, these shall be displayed here in detail and be true to type.
What happened? It would seem that when you get involved in something as precious as collecting plants things can turn quite sower, let me be honest here, some people in the Canna world are so blinkered and damn right offensive they become hurt full towards anyone who disagrees with them, be warned, many will tell you total lies, use you, take from you and then slag you off behind your back as well as on public forums. I am not joking...
Another Factor, Canna Virus. Cannas like all plants can suffer from disease, it had become a real problem in this part of the world especially the rhizome (bulb) market, nearly everything you buy now this way will be diseased. You really must only buy healthy growing plants. It is not worth the risk.
There are many people who collect Cannas, some have truly impressive collections, the most impressive and the one I am most enviable of is Karchesky Canna
www.karcheskycanna.com and they also run
http://americancannaregistry.blogspot.com/ Hart Canna is my second choice, even though I have never seen the collection I do know it is worth a visit. They also sell Cannas
http://www.hartcanna.co.uk/ there are many small exotic nurseries that also sell plants, you only have to search.
I will go through some that are worthy over the next few months!
Finally, my main gripe about Europe is this, the choice of Cannas to buy is just plain rubbish! Very little choice and many are only OK in my book, so there we have it, a little background, you can take it or leave it, that's the best thing about being human, we can decide for ourselves what we think...
