My favourite plants are:

‘Mary’ Although it can be difficult to grow the colour of Mary's flowers cannot be beaten, a brilliant scarlet. It is without doubt my favourite.
‘Thalia’ is perhaps the easiest to produce a good show plant. It is a banker for doing exactly what you want. I am never without some in my greenhouse and garden.
‘Gartenmeister Bondstedt’ is similar to ‘Thalia’ in looks and behaviour. Another you can rely on.
‘Bornemans Beste’ I have not been growing this for long but it produces good plants but you have to treat it carefully or it drops its lower leaves.
‘Insulinde’ A relatively new triphylla which I also have not been growing for long, but it is definitely one to grow and produces good plants quickly.
I will explain my method of producing a good show plant which takes me about 18 months. By the end of this time my cutting, taken in February/March, should be in anything from an 8-14 inch pot by August the following year.

I take cuttings that consist of a growing tip and three pairs of leaves. I only take softwood cuttings as they root easily. There is plenty of new growth on my stock plants by February/March so this is the ideal time to take them. I then cut off the bottom two pairs of leaves being careful not to damage the appearing side shoots. This leaves me with a growing tip with a pair of leaves below it and two sets of emerging side shoots. The cutting is placed into my rooting compost so that the emerging side shoots are under the surface and the pair of leaves and growing tip are above the surface. The idea of leaving the side shoots under the surface is that they will eventually produce shoots from below the compost to give me a bushier plant than a cutting of just a growing tip and pair of leaves would. Incidentally, I take all my fuchsia cuttings this way with great success, including non-triphylla types and species.

The cuttings are in individual cells and placed on my hot bench, which is moist sand kept at about 60°f. I find that fuchsias root best with a gentle heat applied to the bottom of the rooting compost. When they have rooted I grow them on as I do the rest of my fuchsias. That is regular potting up and stopping every three pairs of leaves. It is important with triphyllas that you do not let them get potbound. I find that the more you pot them up the bigger they get more quickly. It is also important when they require potting up, that the white roots should be just showing at the edge of the pot. It is not good to let the roots start to go round the pot.

I also feed my plants a weak feed at every watering, usually about quarter strength with a balanced fertiliser. I will give the cuttings a final stop about mid-June and allow them to flower. The true terminal flowering triphyllas can take up to fifteen weeks to flower but I find that twelve to fourteen weeks is a good rule of thumb. This is the beauty of growing triphyllas for showing. I can stop them early and they remain in full flower for much longer than my other show plants so it is easier to time the flowering.

At the end of September I cut the new plants to about four inches and remove any foliage. The reason for cutting them back to so far is to encourage them to break low down and thus give me a plant next year with foliage from top to bottom. Triphyllas which are only given a light pruning at this time produce plants with long bare stems and no lower foliage. I then place this plant on its side in a damp shaded area of the floor of my greenhouse, misting with tepid water regularly to encourage it to break. Within four weeks the plant has broken and it is stood upright and grown on slowly through the winter.

I will only occasionally give a very weak feed to this plant. I have read that you need to keep a minimum of about 40°f but before I got my hot bench I had a winter where the outside temp had dropped to –28°f and the min/max thermometer in my greenhouse was at –6°f. My heater could not cope with the extreme cold of that winter but my triphyllas were not affected (thankfully) the reason being that they obviously had not been frosted. So when overwintering keep your plants in the warmest spot in your greenhouse which in mine is at the back and up high. In January, I place my plants on my hot bench and they stay on this till June. I have found that by placing them on a gentle bottom heat, it keeps the compost at a higher minimum temperature and they grow much better. I step up the feeding now and give a weak feed at every watering. Most important is potting up regularly when required; the plants seem to check and stop growing if they are allowed to get potbound. The plants are stopped at every three sets of leaves and once again given a final stop in mid-June. If you are putting them in the garden or containers I would give them a final stop about late April or early May to have them flowering in early to mid-summer. I do not place any of my plants outside before mid-June as they are very frost tender and the night temperatures are not suitable before this. We get our last frosts up to the first week in June. My large triphyllas are treated the same way (cut back late September to four inches) and they produce big plants year after year.

Great care has to be taken with the watering of triphyllas. Too much or too little water and the lower leaves fall off and we get these "bare bottomed" plants where all the foliage is at the top of the plant. I find that in summer I cannot give them too much water and plunge the whole pot into water till the bubbles stop and the plant is soaked. This is best done early in the morning but they may need water again in the afternoon. Early in the season is when the plants can be overwatered and lose there lower leaves.

If you end up with a plant where the lower leaves have fallen off you can do one of two things. You can "drop pot" it. This is where you put a little compost in a pot about two inches bigger than the one it is in and then place the pot in this and fill the compost up to the start of the foliage or as high as you can. This is my favourite method and the one I would use myself. You can also cut off a small section of the rootball and drop pot it this way to bring the foliage closer to the compost. I also use this method with most of my species fuchsias with great results. I hope this article has been of some use to someone and you give it a try. I am sure you will not be disappointed.

I live in Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland. My local society, which I founded, is the Inverness and District Fuchsia Society which is affiliated to the British Fuchsia Society. It is the most northern society in Britain. Fraser Ross, <Fraser.Ross@btinternet.com>