From The Yard (08/08).1

Aquilegia is Columbine and comes from the latin meaning “dove”. The next time you see an aquilegia flower, turn it upside down and see if it doesn’t resemble a circle of doves sitting around drinking or like talons of an eagle?

This plant is a late spring or early summer bloomer for the full sun. It will take very light shade and continue to bloom throughout the summer in Calgary


Planting
The Columbines height varies from about three inches to over thirty inches and each variety will grow taller in the warmer of climates. If you have choices, plant the taller types twelve inches apart and the shorter varieties six inches apart and you’ll see blooms in shades of pink, blues, whites and yellows as well as combinations of them.

Columbine prefer a decent soil but certainly one that is well-drained. Sorry...no clay soils for this plant.

Propagation
This is one of the most promiscuous of flowers, producing large numbers of seed and if you have two distinct species in your garden, it will not take long to have hybrids.

And because they tend to be short lived plants, you need to keep new ones coming along from seed. This presents a small problem with the hybrid varieties as the offspring is not guaranteed to come true from seed - what's neat is that transplanted columbine which is purple, might come in yellow the next.

Work this to your advantage. Pick the plants you like and allow them to set seed. Pull out any you do not like and do not let them set seed. Eventually, you’ll wind up with some pretty good looking plants that are “all yours”.