Toby Buckland: What is Toby’s ‘desert island’ flower? Read on…
It might be cold outside, but as long as Toby has his favourite nerines to keep him company, he’s in the pink
“The flowers are a botanical wonder”
IF I had to choose a desert-island flower, the bloom I’d rescue from the breakers is Nerine ‘Zeal Giant’. I love shocking-pink flowers, and this nerine’s petals are pinker than the Pink Panther sharing candyfloss with a flamingo… in the back of a pink Cadillac.
This plant also knows how to survive a shipwreck. Nerines hark from the Western Cape of South Africa, but when the first bulbs arrived on Blighty, rather than trot down a gang plank at a port they bobbed onto a beach after floating free from the hold of a stricken ship. This was back in the mid-17th century in Guernsey, where, thanks to the mild maritime climate, the flowers naturalised to become a cornerstone for the cutflower industry of the Channel Islands.
This Crusoe-esque survival and colonisation is celebrated in the nerine’s Latin name of N. sarniensis – Sarnia, as if you didn’t know, being the Roman name for Guernsey.
Another moniker is the Guernsey lily, and although not hardy, the flowers are a true botanical wonder. The petals possess an iridescent glow so, like a silk dress in the sunshine, appear to change colour depending on your viewpoint.
This optical effect is created by microscopic ridges on the surface of the blooms that bounce the light and its heat away, stopping the South African sun fading the colourful pigments.
It also makes the flowers easy for pollinators to find.
All nerines flower late in the summer, and my favourite ‘Zeal Giant’ is in bloom from late September into November. It’s a hybrid that inherits luminous blooms from the Guernsey sarniensis side, and garden worthiness from the hardier bowdenii side. If you have a cold garden and greenhouse for winter, it’s happy in a pot but best in shelter and sun, where it bulks up into free-flowering clumps that crowd the soil surface.
My nerines are planted amongst the shallow roots of a tall Torbay palm, where they shine as brightly as a neon SOS sign and supply long-lasting flowers for the kitchen windowsill. No arranging necessary.