Plant the loveliest little lilies
The ‘trout lily’ might not sound like a looker, but as Val Bourne explains, these elegant woodland plants are a must for shady borders
Erythroniums will make a dainty addition to shady corners. Val Bourne picks her favourites
Erythroniums have elegant flowers with upswept petals, rather like Tiffany lamps on legs. They make excellent April additions to a woodland-style border. Enjoying fertile soil and light shade, they can rub shoulders with hardy ferns, hellebores, pulmonarias and wood anemones. However, they won’t tolerate dry shade or extreme heat – they’re all found in cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere – and they loathe drying out; erythroniums always produce larger flowers and more sumptuous foliage in a damp spring than in a dry one. The taller forms can be planted close to ponds. The most readily available are the handsome, easy-to-grow North American species; E. californicum ‘White Beauty’ provides the best starting point, with large cream flowers. When illuminated by sunlight, the necklace of brown stamens shows through, and this brown colouring also appears as a fish-scale pattern on the dark-green foliage, earning larger erythroniums the name of trout lily. ‘White Beauty’ is readily available in September as dry bulbs together with greenish-yellow hybrid ‘Pagoda’, which has attractively mottled foliage; it’s better than ‘Kondo’ whose flowers go over quickly. If happy, vigorous ‘Pagoda’ can produce up to 10 flowers per stem and bulks up quickly. ‘White Beauty’ usually has just one flower per stem, but good clumps contain 20 or 30 stems. Both grow in my woodland garden and I divide clumps every 3-4 years.
Showy hybrids
Lots of named showy hybrids are available from specialist sellers such as Twelve Nunns (01778 590455; www.twelvenunns. co.uk). Late-April flowering ‘Harvington Snowgoose’ has large cream-white flowers and darkly mottled foliage. It was raised by Hugh Nunn who bred the Harvington hellebores. Hugh also found a fine pink form in the Hidcote Manor bog garden, named ‘Hidcote Beauty’. This handsome plant with starry flowers and white-marked foliage
has grown well for me but is taking time to bulk up. I find the diminutive, March-flowering
dog’s-tooth violet (Erythronium denscanis) much harder to grow than the bigger species. Its intriguing common name comes from the shape of the bulb, which resembles a canine tooth. The tiny cyclamen-like pink flowers are held above jade-green leaves marked reddish brown. The only species found in Eurasia, E. dens-canis grows at high altitude on the edges of deciduous woodland and in grass, in areas where
it’s not too cold or warm – about 12C (54F) on average. My garden might be too cold. I do best with white ‘Snowflake’, which often does well in grass. It spreads by self-seeding after being pollinated by early bees, so give it a position with some sunshine to help the nectar flow. Erythronium dens-canis plate from 1797