An ubiquity of sparrows.

A certain traveller who knew many continents was asked what he found most remarkable of all. He replied the ubiquity of sparrows.

Adam Zagejewski

Just a sparrow

My world

Sparrows go cheep

Early morning they come to my room;
Wake me up with a familiar tune.

Tell me not of joy: there’s none. Now my little sparrows gone.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden and felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.                                                              

Henry Thoreau

The genius of Harry Poole. More of Harry’s pictures.

All things bright and beautiful

October at Boundary Cottage

Whistling ducks

Wellingtons!

A story of a dicentra… and a fine lady.

Dicentra formosa alba

The lady

I had just been given permission to hold the National Dicentra collection. I had all of five plants! I received a letter from a lady called Joyce Fussey. She was a keen hardy planter and she had raised a white dicentra from seed. She had no memory of where the seed had come from. One of many seed distribution schemes. Did I think the dicentra was worthy of wider distribution? Her son drove her over from Goathland. Joyce does not drive.

Joyce is a gifted authoress. She used to write her books in the cold North Yorkshire winter and tended her garden all the year round. She writes of her life on a small farm which nestles at the lip of a deep valley. She tells me that she has experienced frost in every single month of the year, Fortunately not in the same one! Her books are delightful hilarious accounts of farm life and tales of amusing and sometimes riotous incidents in her garden. 

I saw one of her old meadows in full bloom. Never having been treated with a herbicide, it was a riot of wild flowers. It was the most beautiful display I have ever seen.

You just might have seen parts of her garden! The popular TV series ‘Heartbeat’ was filmed in the area, her garden was sometimes used as a set.                                       

Her books are delightful. They have wonderful titles such as ‘Milk my ewes and weep’, ‘Cows in the corn’ and ‘Cats in the coffee’. Her books never made ‘the big-time’. A different shake of life’s dice and she would have had a James Heriot acclaim. Joyce is not rich in possessions but she is in her life. Originally without mains electricity she has taken delight in her garden and simple country matters. She tells me of the particular thrill she still gets when one of her admirers has sought her out and called. She has had visitors from all over the world. I can’t help thinking that had she been a few years younger she would have had a very fine blog!  

Dicentra formosa alba 

                           

The dicentra.

I planted it my garden, my expanding collection. It was a very fine form of Dicentra formosa alba. It perhaps had larger flowers than the type, perhaps it flowered a little longer because it did not readily self seed. I gave it my ill-informed approval. Joyce wrote to nurseryman Adrian Bloom. He came north to see it, he liked it. He liked it even more when I informed him that my colleague Philip Orton had thousands of micro-propagated plants in his lab at Askham Bryan College. I think I glimpsed a gleam in his eye! Adrian undertook to   undertake the registration and promotion of this fine plant for sale throughout Europe. 

I wanted to call the dicentra ‘Joyce Fussey’, she deserved the accolade and it would promote her name. Adrian said “with that name it won’t sell”. It was to be called ‘Avalanche’, you can just sense the rush of the brilliant white flowers. It was to be launched at Chelsea. Joyce, Philip and myself were invited to the celebrity day. My two friends  had a wonderful time and the dicentra was featured on the BBC. Much to my regret, this nitwit here, elected to remain at college to give his lectures. As if the poor students wanted to hear them!

And so ‘Snowflakes’ was born! Snowflakes! what about ‘Avalanche’? Think about it, to the British it sounds exciting, to the rest of the world it’s image is one of tragedy and death.

The rise and fall of  Dicentra ‘Snowflakes’

It appeared in Bressingham Gardens catalogue. It graced thousands of gardens. It was available for some years and generally offered in the trade. It disappeared! I know no one who has it now. I might have lost it myself! For some reason it did not have the constitution. Perhaps it had mutated in micro-propagation to give a weak ‘sport’. Perhaps it was susceptable to a virus. I don’t know.

Three years ago I called on Joyce and she retrieved a plant from under an old hedge and gave me some of the original none micro-propagated stock. On the same day I bought a plant from Pat Perry’s nursery at Sleights as we went on to Whitby. It was labelled ‘locally bred’. 

Shame on me I have lost it again! Many of us lost our best plants in the 2010 winter when we had tried to keep special plants safe and potted them to hold in our unheated greenhouses. It was the worst thing to do. Plants were frozen solid in their pots when they would have survived in the ground. Dare I ask Joyce for some more? I feel another trip to the seaside is due.

Dicentra ‘Adrian Bloom’. As son of plantsman Alan Bloom, Adrian has a dicentra that bears his name. Dicentras vary slightly in colour depending on season, degree of shade and soil. This is in my opinion the true colour of D. Adrian Bloom.

Adrian jovially declared that Dicentra “Adrian Bloom’ did not grow well in his garden!

But this similar darker red cultivar ‘Bacchanal’ does!

Difference between Dicentra formosa and Dicentra eximia

The correct name of Joyce’s White dicentra was Dicentra formosa alba ‘Snowflakes’  All similar white dicentras sold in the UK are also Dicentra formosa alba. If they are labelled Dicentra eximia alba they are almost certainly named wrong!

The flowers of D.eximia and ‘D.formosa’ are completely different. The picture below shows   the long elegant shape of D.eximia.  All the other pictures in this post shows the short dumpy flowers typical of D.formosa.

This is the flower of Dicentra eximia. Anyone wanting to grow genuine (pink) Dicentra eximia can buy seed from Chilterns.

A typical Dicentra formosa flower

Dicentra eximia alba does exist in the USA - pictures can be seen on the net. Examine the shape of the flower carefully. You will find a huge array of white dicentra, some incorrectly named.

In google images I find my own picture of Dicentra formosa oregana ‘Pearl Drops’ under the search-term of Dicentra eximia alba!

Dicentra formosa has these characteristic underground rhizomes.  Dicentra eximia does not.

Another white dicentra. Dicentra formosa ‘Aurora’

My previous dicentra posts

National collection

Dicentra macrocapnos

An important botanical principle

Sudden shrub death. Why has my previously healthy shrub died?

An occasional forum on topical matters

I went down to the village plot a week ago and found a well established Viburnum davidii and Clematis montana completely dead. As the picture shows a large dead Lonicera purpusii had reduced to a small surviving portion! I did not need to be a Sherlock to know the reason why. The beck at the side of the plot has it’s outlet blocked and in this wet winter had flooded a portion of the plot for more than a month. Although roots are relatively tolerant to flooding when it is cold in winter, this had been too much. The roots had died for lack of aeration. Other more tolerant shrubs and herbaceous plants had survived.

Lonicera purpusii, all the dead wood pruned away

I was not a good day! At the bottom of my own garden the buds of  a five year old sorbus were starting to abort and go brown. Worse, a wonderful large azalea given to me by Peter Williams a year ago had the same symptoms. Our horrible wet year had been supportive to get the azalea established but now it was dying! I am relatively confident of the drainage of this low lying part of my garden, but in winter I know the water table can be high. Deep roots had died! It is a very common gardening phenomenon for such plants to die of drought in spring when the weather turns dry. And boy, has it turned dry. There has been no appreciable rain since January and dehydrating winds have almost continuously blown for months. I emptied a few buckets of water onto these two plants. Just in time. Surviving buds are now growing strongly. The plant said “thank you, for saving my life”. I congratulated myself and Brenda chastised me for not doing anything sooner!

A word of warning, Deeper down my soil is still wet. My heavy watering gives the plants respite to make new roots and capillary contacts to be strengthened . Unless it remains very dry I won’t be watering again. 

My rescued sorbus

This normally evergreen golden privet has been scorched by harsh freezing winds. I am completely confident that in a month it will have beautiful foliage.

For a year or two I worked as a ‘hands on’ horticultural consultant for a day every week at a very grand garden. The owners required a rapid makeover of an area for an important domestic occasion. Unprepared two foot high open-ground junipers from their own nursery were planted ever so carefully by one of the gardeners in September. Lifting unprepared plants - they should have been undercut several months sooner - caused considerable root damage. I knew they would survive the winter when the soil would be wet, but that they would be vulnerable when it dried in Spring. Although it was not my own project, I took on an undeclared watching brief. Unfortunately I missed my weekly visit in a very dehydrating dry windy Spring spell. When I returned and arranged a heavy watering it was too late for half of the plants!

There is nothing wrong with my cedar that is suddenly turning brown. Even evergreens drop their leaves sometime and in a short while it will be gloriously green

My friend Iris’s front garden is on a gentle slope parallel to the road and which runs at ninety degrees to her garden. The garden itself is almost level. She was a very proud of her young birch which was well established and growing vigorously. Two years ago York had a spell of a few days of torrential summer rain. Typical of our area, nature then ‘turned the tap off’ for several weeks after. Iris was distressed to find her beloved birch severely wilting and showing signs of imminent death. A couple of buckets of water reversed the decline and it is now a very fine tree. Slopes are notorious for causing drainage problems. Sub-surface water had drained down the slope and it’s descent had been slowed by Iris’s flat garden. Roots in summer are highly sensitive to waterlogging and roots die for lack of aeration. When her tree, after six weeks of drought started to show signs of distress, Iris’s single watering gave the plant sufficient respite to make new roots and subsequently thrive. Inexperienced gardeners beware, plants can wilt because they are still waterlogged!  Do not water these! This phenomenon is often seen with overwatered house plants.

Years ago I had had a similar experience. I was very proud of my cherry tree ‘Stella’ grafted on the then new, dwarfing rootstock ‘Colt’. Rootstocks are relevant to these matters of root sensitivities to poor aeration. My tree was extremely healthy and had been established three years.

Their was a slight dip in the land contour and it was a very wet summer spell. Two weeks after very heavy rain my beloved plant was dead.

A lady had planted a new hedge and the weather turned dry. She was correctly advised to generously water with several buckets of water. If drought continued it would have been good practice to repeat heavy watering, perhaps every ten days. Unfortunately to ‘make sure’ she generously watered them every night!  On her heavy clay soil she created waterlogged conditions, roots were deprived of air and the hedge died.

This wind exposed callistemon was killed by minus twelve degrees centigrade of cold. The same variety sheltered by a wall survived.

Although  in this case there is no hope for my dead plant, sometimes cold-killed tops regenerate from roots in the ground. Only when satisfied that the top is completely dead cut hard to the ground. Do not dig them out.

We have a fine Betula jaquemontii. Brenda ‘suggested’ we should have a ‘grove’ of three. After several months of persistent negotiation I agreed. A local nursery had some very fine open ground plants. I ordered two and called later that day to collect the newly lifted trees. They were deceptively well wrapped with moist compost. I subsequently deduced that perhaps in a tea break, they had been left on the soil surface and been allowed to dry. Bare-rooted-tree roots must never be allowed to dry out . Planted in March the buds refused to open and by June the buds were starting to die. Peter Williams agreed with my own diagnosis and they were pronounced ‘dead ducks’ and I cut them down to the ground. I went out and bought two well rooted containerised trees. Three weeks later the cut back birch started to sprout. I now have a grove of five!

Acer utilis jaquemontii 

Peter gave me a fine container-grown cotinus last Spring. It showed some dieback last Autumn and is now completely dead. I do not know why!

You can check a shrub is dead by bending branches and finding them brittle. When you scrape such branches there is no live green tissue.

One definition of a gardening expert is that he is a person who knows why his plant has died. There are many causes of tree and shrub death and some come straight from the garden centre. I would be very grateful to hear of reader’s experiences of sudden plant death.

Judging by the large number of ‘hits’ I caught a raw nerve with my post about my cold-damaged Garrya elliptica. After I posted, it became considerably browner but as you can see from the pictures it is now on the mend.

Wonderful worms

I am passionate about earthworms. Just ask my former students!  A few years ago, the New Scientist reviewed a delightful book about worms by Amy Stewart. I recommend  it. It’s called ‘The Earth Moved’. Un-be-known to me, Brenda noted it as a potential Christmas present. She went to the bookshop and the assistant checked on her computer. “Oh yes madame, we have it, you will find it in Fiction!”

Minimum cultivation methods are repeatedly shown to increase worm populations. Why are those people who care about worms, not up in arms about soil cultivation which destroys worm habitat? Where are the protests against rotavators that shred worms?

This March, all soil surfaces in my zero cultivated, glyphosate-sprayed, cemetery garden were completely covered in earthworm casts.

Worm populations

These are hugely variable and dependent on a myriad of factors such as  rainfall or drought.The following numbers of worms per square meter are a very rough guide -

• cultivated soil, 150 
• no till management, 300 
• grassland, 500, often considerably more

Counts in excess of a thousand per square meter are not uncommon. Darwin was wrong! Never did I think I would write these words about my all time hero who did more than anyone else to research and promote the merits of worms. It’s just that even he underestimated how many worms there can be. Agricultural grassland can contain a greater weight of worms than the cattle that graze!

Benefits of worms

There are many species of worms. More than 150 of horticultural significance worldwide. All have varying habitats, many in most unlikely places. Perhaps the two most common to gardeners - both usually graced by their latin names - are the night crawler, Lumbricus terrestris and the brandling or tiger worm, Eisenia fetida. The night crawler may be found all the way down to a couple of meters, whereas eisenia is found in decaying vegetation and manure and barely survives in a mineral soil.

The benefits of worms to are huge.

• Their tunnels permeate the soil and provide aeration, drainage and easy root penetration.
• It has been pointed out by Bill Mollison, a founder of Permaculture, that as worms move through the ground they act like pistons sweeping air through their tunnels.
• They redistribute organic matter and in particular pull surface vegetation into the ground.
• They intimately mix soil particles and organic matter in their gut. They create water-stable aggregates (crumbs) of sand, silt and especially clay.
• Nutrients are concentrated in their castings. Compared with figures for surrounding topsoil there are enhanced levels, typically nitrogen x 5, phosphate x 7 and potash x 11.
• They shift soil! A  single worm might cast as much as 5kg of soil in a year!
• Some species destroy harmful soil nematodes in their gut.
• Their casts are rich in biologically active microbes.

It’s not all good

Could it be that worms are ever unwanted?

• Because some worms cast at the soil surface green-keepers do not like them.The same casts are of huge benefit when they occur in the none-digger’s vegetable garden when he wishes to make a tilth. For the domestic lawn, I believe worms to be beneficial. I was a little taken aback at the criticism of my recent  post when I mentioned that my use of iron sulphate as a moss killer also discourages casting worms. My critics have a point, but I would argue that the effect of iron sulphate on overall worm population is small and does little harm to the deep crawlers. The surface casting types - the minority -  just migrate to my borders. Compared to the huge shifts in worm populations caused by the environment and meteorological factors the detrimental effects of a gardener’s activities such as his limited use of fertilizers and weedkillers is small.
• Some gardeners worry that worms might clog the drainage holes in their pots. I have no such concerns and just ignore them.
• The burrows they create has been known to destroy earth dams!
• As described in Amy Stewart’s fine book, introduced none-native worm species, can destroy natural woodland habitat. Worms’ very efficiency in mixing organic matter into the soil removes surface decaying vegetation, the natural niche for many wild plants.
• They bury things! I am being a little frivolous here! My thirty year old rock garden stones in my previous home virtually disappeared! Whenever I shift logs that have been standing on the ground I see evidence of the soil that earthworms move. Could worms be a partial cause of the burial of archeological remains?

The base of my log-pile becomes infiltrated with worm casts. Here an upturned log exposes casts on the ground

But some good news for gardeners!  Although many fine public gardens are host to the New Zealand flatworm, (they just don’t tell you), this dreaded nematode predator of worms is not proving to be the scourge we once feared.

What can the gardener do to encourage worms?

• Don’t dig!
• Leave dead weeds, leaves and other  organic debris on the soil surface.
• Mulch.
• Many worms like a neutral or slightly alkaline soil. Their digestive juices need  calcium. On acid soil applying lime may help.
• Grow plants! Perhaps in my post about green manure I neglected to mention how  good it is for worms. And they love clover!
• Add garden compost and well rotted manure.

Worms like untidy gardeners

Something for the weekend. Nicely nastic tulips

Lovely Lady-tulips

Peter Williams has let me have these fine pictures of Tulipa clusiana. They were taken in his greenhouse at ten minute intervals. As the morning temperature rises they open extremely rapidly, presenting themselves for potential insect pollination. Later in the day when temperatures fall or light fades, they close. This plant movement is an example of thermonasty, a plant movement in response to temperature. Lady-tulips can be seen  outside in their full glory at Peter’s Open Day tomorrow!

My own naturalised tulip, ‘Little Beauty’  is also thermonastic. Personally, I like tulips in tight bud when they do not open at all on a dull rainy day.

Naturalised from self sown seed

Later in the day

Weathervane House - one of Yorkshire’s finest gardens

Weathervane House is open
Sunday 5th May, noon until 5pm

The Open Garden scheme is a fine British institution. Run largely by volunteers for charity, it provides access to private gardens and for we garden-openers, the satisfaction of sharing our pride and joy. Known universally as the ‘yellow book’, an annual publication describes gardens open in England and Wales. The same information is provided in free booklets for each county. Click the Yellow Book link on the right to get even more detailed information on the net. The link leads you specifically to Peter and Julie Williams' garden, open next Sunday (May 5) in my own village of Seaton Ross.

Peter and Julie have developed their garden over forty years. Since Peter’s retirement, he has had the time to put ‘icing on the cake’ by extending his existing fine range of beautiful and rare plants. Most of his five acre garden can be inspected next Sunday. Much of the garden is in woodland, where well managed, lovely trees provide structure and protection for underplanted shrubs. These, in turn, give background and shade to an understory of naturalised herbaceous plants and bulbs. 

The garden is furnished with some spectacular garden features and adornments. Peter is a craftsman in wood and his summer-house is a sight to behold. Unusually for the York area where the soil is generally alkaline, at Seaton Ross it is acid and Peter’s garden is full of acid loving plants. Next Sunday is a particularly fine time to see his azaleas, rhododendrons and magnolias, This peculiar season has telescoped together a large range of normally seasonally divided plants. A delightful feature - especially if it rains - is a very large polythene tunnel, where not only is there an extremely fine display of plants, there is also a wide range of exciting plants for sale.

But let Peter’s own fine pictures now do the talking.

Magnolia stellata

General garden view late April/early May

Mixed rhododendron and azalea bed  in early May

Hepatica japonica

Trillium grandiflorum

General garden view early May

Mixed azalea bed

Tulipa clusiana

About Peter Williams, the man who greened Yorkshire’s slag heaps.

Thirty years ago, when you travelled north on the motorways, unsightly pit slag heaps painted a dreadful image of the North. Not any more!  A huge national effort was made to restore the colliery remains. Peter, as a post-doctoral research-fellow at the University of York, studied and researched the recycling of colliery spoil. The team in which he worked provided much of the information needed for the successful restoration project. Although a wide range of ecological and horticultural management principles were involved in the process, perhaps the most significant was adding huge quantities of lime to counter the extreme sulphur-derived acidity in the waste. Peter tells the story of how he recently took a post graduate student to study the ecology on a twenty year old reclaimed site. A measure of his success was that it had merged into the natural landscape so well that he failed to find it! 

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has recently adopted one of the reclaimed sites as a Nature Reserve at Water Haigh, near Wakefield!

Plant propagation is one of Peter’s passions. In particular he grafts rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, cut-leaf maples, fruit and much more. I once mumbled to him that I was not very good at grafting! He responded that it was as easy as sharpening a pencil!Brenda and I looked at each other and the unspoken thought was “have you ever seen Roger try to sharpen a pencil?”

Formerly principal lecturer at York St. John University, Peter is an ecologist, plant physiologist, soil scientist, statistician and gardener. When you see his garden, I suspect you will guess which he loves best. He is a friendly gregarious Welshman. Be sure to to talk to Peter and Julie if you can get to their Open Day!

You will certainly enjoy Julie’s fabulous cakes!

 Julie’s delicious homemade Open Day cakes

Yorkshire rhubarb

This post contains Yorkshire dialect and ends in a rude rhyme

 Us tykes grows champion rhu’bab

(We know how to grow good rhubarb in Yorkshire)

A  hundred years ago Yorkshire was the European centre of rhubarb production. Not only did huge quantities go by train, the rhubarb express, to Covent garden, further supplies went on to Paris. In a thirty square mile triangle between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield early last century, there were 200 producers. After the war the industry fell into severe decline. Now on a much smaller scale, production has revived. Rhubarb is again fashionable. Wakefield has an annual rhubarb festival  in February and the industry is now a tourist attraction. Yorkshire rhubarb is ‘forced’ in heated completely dark sheds. It was traditionally picked by candlelight and you could hear the plants grow as the buds burst. We used to take the students on an annual visit. We also would go to Cawood experimental station where director Frank Smith built up a huge collection of traditional varieties. Many varieties had debilitating virus which were ‘cleaned up’ by modern specialist techniques. The national collection now resides at RHS Harlow Carr garden. The now smaller rhubarb triangle is said to be between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell.

Rhu’bab likes it a bit parky  (it’s a native of Siberia)

In some parts of the world rhubarb grows all year round but in temperate climates like our own, it has a winter dormancy and needs to accumulate cold before growth will restart in Spring. The rhubarb triangle is in a huge frost pocket  between the Pennine hills and  provides suitable chilly conditions!. It is suggested that in the  past, pollution in this industrial area, caused leaves to be shed early in Autumn and get the process of satisfying  the cold requirement off to a quick start. Modern growers  keep an accurate record  of temperatures and when a specific number of ‘day degrees’ of cold are accumulated, they know the rhubarb can be forced in the sheds. Timperley Early, the variety I grow myself, is an example of an excellent rhubarb with a low cold requirement.

Apart from the cold, other aspects of history and geography made the triangle eminently suitable for rhubarb.

• The soil is deep and fertile.
• There is heavy rainfall in the Pennines.
• The West Riding was well placed in emerging long distance transport systems.
• The local wool industry provided a plentiful supply of cheap wool-shoddy waste. This ‘manure’ is a nitrogen rich material that releases its bounty over a three year period. This is the time it takes rhubarb to attain sufficient size to be forced before exhausted, in early summer, it is thrown away!
• Soot can be beneficial to the soil and polluting sulphur helped limit fungus disease.
• Cheap Yorkshire coal fueled the forcing sheds. No longer.
• With the pollution, nothing else would grow - I think I might have made this one up!

Lerning y’

(rhubarb fact sheet)

• Rhubarb leaves (but not the stalk!) contain oxalic acid and are poisonous 
• Some gardeners make an infusion of rhubarb leaves to control pests, although in view of the above it might not be a good idea!
• Apart from its well known laxative properties, before modern medicine, the drug rhacoma extracted from its root, was greatly valued for its healing properties. In the seventeenth century this drug sold for three times the price of opium!
• During the second world war the price of rhubarb was restricted to one shilling a pound (sounds expensive to me).

'Ear all, see all, say nowt;

Eyt all, sup all, pay nowt;

And if ivver tha does owt fer nowt-

 allus do it fer thissen 

(Grow your own rhubarb)

March. a very late season. Anxious to have our first pie this is the only occasion I will  allow myself to pick all the stalks

Rhubarb is a rewarding vegetable to grow at home. Because it is so easy many gardeners do not give it the treatment it deserves. Plant it in full sunshine and feed it. It benefits from a generous late winter top dressing of growmore, or better, Yara mila complex or similar balanced fertilizer. If you mulch rhubarb with plenty of farmyard manure or compost it will really thrive. Many gardeners like myself do not force it but choose to pull rhubarb sticks right through the spring and summer.

New gardeners sometime do not realise that when you remove the leaves from a plant  you weaken it. This is inevitable with rhubarb as you eat the petiole (the leaf stalk). New plants need a year or two without cropping to get started and even with an established plant, too many pies and crumbles is not a good idea. As a completely unscientific guide, my own clump in full foliage covers slightly more than a square meter and typically I might pull  ten stalks on about half six occasions  a year! If I actually liked rhubarb I might get away with a little more! I don’t strip the plant and do not take more than 25% of the petioles at a single picking. One final tip. Do not waste your time growing it from seed and never plant rhubarb from a dubious source. If a friend offers you stock from a moribund plant, refuse, it’s probably virused.

A month later and another pie, In a fortnight there will be another. By then the plant will be full size.

“Your rhubarb, I’ve noticed grows

By the outhouse where everyone goes!”

Grandad said, “Lad,

It isn’t so bad..

They’re family! Just people we knows!”

anon

Growing amaryllis lily as a house plant

Hippeastrum

Third annual flowering of my 2010 purchase

It’s one of those plants which we all know by the wrong name!. Hippeastrum is the correct name of the genus, Amaryllidaceae is the name of its family and Amaryllis lily the common name of the plant! To add to any confusion, the ‘true’ amaryllis is a very fine cold greenhouse plant.

Hippeastrums are not hardy and will not stand frost. They like to be warm and low temperature is one reason they can be a ‘difficult’ houseplant. In addition light levels in the home are usually low. These lilies need to be grown in the light of a south facing window or as in my own case, grown in a bright heated conservatory to thrive. 

My friends Mike and Isobel grow a single bulb in a pot. Compared to my own multiple planting they avoid un-coordinated flowering times and variation of height.

My learning curve

It’s only in recent years I have grown this plant. I had previously regarded it as a rather vulgar bulb that people buy, plant, and it flowers and dies. Sometimes it dies slowly over months or even years. On other occasions it is just thrown away! It is spectacular and from a purchased bulb quick to flower. It’s rapid development is unequalled as a  motivator to a child with a potential interest in growing plants.

Turn on your child’s green genes (I have now entered my second childhood!)

Some years ago I was tempted to buy four bulbs at the wonderful ‘floating’ flower market in old Amsterdam. The following year, as the last of the big spenders, I bought three more! From the vendors pictures the latter purchase would have beautiful pink flowers - dream on!  It is nice to have holiday gardening souvenirs but not always wise. I would have been  better buying firm, healthy, correctly named, varieties from Parker’s Wholesale! For a start none of the seven bulbs were the advertised colour and in the second batch only one flowered. Four months after purchase the bulbs had rotted away!  Fortunately some secondary bulbs emerged and survived. I confidently expect some red flowers next year!

Bulbs from my 2011 purchase. Primary bulbs have unfortunately died. At least two of these secondary shoots will flower next year provided they are allowed to naturally die down.

Why hippeastrums are difficult

It’s the lack of good quality light in the house. It’s also the undisciplined nature of the plant. Sometimes the leaves appear before the flowers, at other times the flowers are first. The real secret of successful growing is to look after the leaves and ensure they get plenty of light and to keep them in healthy growth as long as you can. When the foliage starts to die down, usually in Autumn, let them shed their leaves  and withhold water. They are telling you they want to rest! Similarly when they start up, take their cue, and water and feed. One of the biggest causes of death is when the inexperienced gardener continues to give too much water when they die down.

I have to admit I have just the right conditions for my two pots of ‘amaryllis’, a heated conservatory that receives full morning light and a cold greenhouse to which they can migrate for the summer, any time soon. I have the further option of standing them outside after all danger of frost has gone.

A reservation about over prescriptive gardening advice.

As cultural methods for ‘amaryllis are somewhat variable I turned to the RHS to check out a few points before writing this post. This link provides an excellent and detailed explanation of how they are grown.

In my opinion, the article shares a fault with much of the gardening press. This is to give very precise instructions as to temperatures that plants must be grown. I have learned over the years to regard such recommendations as ‘ball-park’ figures, but fear that many new gardeners when they see great precision are ‘put off’ from trying. Nature provides huge day to day variations of temperature and plants still thrive. My own unheated cold greenhouse temperature fluctuates by large amounts and I propagate and grow a huge range of plants. If I followed the literal advice of gardening books I don’t think I would grow anything at all!

Too quickly the flowers fade. Unless you wish to collect seed it will soon be time to cut the flower spike away

Previous house plant posts 

Streptocarpus - cape primrose

Hoya - wax plant

Achimenes - hot water plant