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With everything safely bedded down for the winter I now have more time to enjoy the few little treasures that brave the cold damp and dark days and produce a few blooms to help and brighten up the winter. Nerine bowdenii surly must take pride of place as the most spectacular of the late flowering bulbs. Without fail every year the large deep pink flowers spring from bulbs that have long since shed any semblance of foliage. I think this is what makes them stand out in the garden, the fact that there is nothing else to distract form the flower. My clump of bulbs is planted at the bottom of a South-east facing Escallonia hedge and enjoy the benefits of all day sunshine in the summer (when we get sunshine) and shelter from the prevailing westerly winds in the Winter. They are quite frost hardy but need lots of sunshine to flower well. Nerine sarniensis ( Nerine Corusca Major) is not as hardy as the previous one and is given the shelter of the alpine house for the winter. It flowers about two to three weeks later Nerine Bowdenii, and has a much darker coloured flower. Nerine crispa (Nerine Undulata) is much smaller in all its parts and is not as easy to persuade into flower like the previous two. In fact my two plants have failed to produce any of its mid pink crinkled flowers at all this year, but I am blaming the lack of sunshine rather than my lack of cultivating skills for this failure. Crocus tournefortii MS1093 which came to me by way of Henrick Zutterland, of Gothenburg Botanic gardens in 1993, has bulked up nicely now and never fails to produce an abundance of pale blue flowers on very short stems. This one is not affected by the weather, as are some of the taller varieties, and lasts for weeks. Another one called Crocus caspius lilacinus from the same source flowers just as the previous one has finished and extends the season with an abundance of lovely goblets, a creamy white colour with orange anthers. I had these growing in the bulb frame for a while but they never looked happy until I planted them out in the garden. Crocus don't grow well in pots for me, I am wondering is it that they do not like pots of if I am doing something wrong, anyway I plant them all out in the garden now and have no problems. |
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