Thymus praecox Purple Beauty - Thyme

Thymus praecox 'Purple Beauty' is an early thyme variety that is highly regarded as a groundcover plant for rockeries, sunny borders, and dry gardens. Particularly vigorous, very hardy, easy to grow, and highly floriferous, it forms a dense and uniformly deep pink carpet when it blooms in late spring. It combines highly ornamental flowering with a uniform, dark green, neat appearance, which is pleasantly fragrant. It can be grown in full sun, in well-drained soil, even poor, rocky, sandy, or chalky soil.

Native to Western Europe, Thymus praecox Purple Beauty is a botanical species belonging to the Lamiaceae family. In nature, it is found in dry and arid places, especially on limestone and sandy soils. The 'Purple Beauty' variety, sometimes marketed under the name 'Thymus serpyllum 'Atropurpureus', is the pink-purple flowered form of this medicinal and aromatic plant. This vigorous variety has a very spreading habit and quickly forms a dense foliage mat that is 2 to 10 cm (1 to 4in) high and 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16in) wide. Its tiny, oval, leathery, villous foliage covers flexible, prostrate, and rooting stems at the nodes, so that the plant spreads laterally over time. Numerous essential oil glands are visible under a magnifying glass on the 3 mm (0.2in) long leaves. Its fragrance is slightly less pronounced than that of common thyme, but finer. The flowering takes place from May-June to July depending on the climate. Very small, tubular, bilabiate flowers of pink-red-purple colour, grouped in dense whorls, bloom in spherical cymes at the ends of the current year's shoots, completely covering the foliage and attracting many pollinating insects. Like many Mediterranean plants adapted to drought, thymes develop a double root system, composed of a central taproot, with a fundamental role, which goes deep into the soil or into cracks in rocks, and a superficial network of very long rootlets capable of capturing the slightest surface moisture.

Thymus praecox Purple Beauty is decorative all year round and proves to be very hardy when planted in well-drained or even arid soil. Its spreading habit makes it an ideal plant for elegantly filling the joints of paving, cracks and tops of walls, or the edges of a stone staircase, especially as it tolerates moderate trampling. It will cover the ground in a dry planting bed with similar plants such as lavender, cistus, shrubby salvias, dwarf wormwood, cotton lavender, or rosemary. It will thrive in a very sunny rockery, keeping company with Aubrieta canescens, basket-of-gold or silver, teucrium, creeping ceanothus, or other creeping varieties with pink, white, or mauve flowers. It is also used as a condiment; its fragrance is highly appreciated in cooking. Used alone or in bouquet garni, combined with bay leaf, parsley, and rosemary, thyme leaves flavor stews, sauces, marinades, and court-bouillons. They are also used in infusions, reputed to relieve digestive ailments. A sun-loving plant, thyme can also be planted in dry borders or in pots, keeping it close at hand near the kitchen...