Landscape 101

The anticipation of bulbs flowering at the end of a long, dark winter helps to sustain us. With bulb planting upon us, it’s always fun to try something you’ve never grown before. Best sources for the more unusual and rarer bulbs are often small specialist mail order nurseries and Trade Me.

Do consider:

+ Charming in the garden, Sandersonia aurantiaca with its orange bell-shaped flowers and fresh green leaves look fabulous in the vase. Arguably, the hardest part about growing them is obtaining the tubers or germinating the seeds. Plant tubers in spring in sun or semi-shade in well-drained soils, and offer support for stems, which can grow to 70cm. + Lachenalia aloides is a sweet half-hardy native of South Africa. Blooming in late winter to early spring, it grows best in warmer regions, in light, free-draining soils, in full sun to light shade. For maximum impact plant in clumps. Lachenalia aloides var. aloides has yellow-orange red-tipped tubular flowers; those of var. tricolour are yellow green and red; and var. aurea

produces spikes of sunny orange and yellow.

+ Unlike their northern comrades, who can grow these dramatic bulbs in the garden, southern gardeners more often grow

hippeastrums (often incorrectly called

amaryllis) indoors for a brief yet spectacular Christmas display. However, these South Americans will grow outside in pots in colder climes in a sunny warm site, protected from draughts, winds and, of course, frost or snow. To get the best display of these large and lush trumpet-like blooms, plant with necks above the soil, don’t water in winter and feed once watering resumes in spring – later if you want their flowers for the festive season.

+ Not for the faint-hearted nor those in tiny or northern gardens is the Cardiocrinum giganteum. Nor is what is commonly known as the Himalayan lily for the impatient because they can take up to seven years to flower from bulb, after which they die but fortunately not before producing bulb offshoots and seeds. Reaching three metres-plus in height with powerfully fragrant flowers, these lilies need cool, woodland conditions with damp, humus-rich soils.