Garden Guru: Late developers

A wealth of strident colour and striking shapes are produced by late-flowering bulbs. Haemanthus coccineus (left) and Brunsvigia josephinae. Photos / Supplied

One of the great advantages of being late for everything - I speak from experience - is that when you arrive at a party when it's more than halfway through, most of the earlybirds have exhausted their most sparkling subjects of conversation and latch on to you like some long-lost sibling.

You can get away with recounting any old snippet of waffle and be received as if you were scattering sunflower seeds to starving pigeons.

At band practices, too, I turn up late. It's never intentional but seems to have become a habit. Again there are advantages - the smalltalk is over, the equipment has all been put out and, best of all, everyone is there so you can get stuck in without any of those annoying stragglers.

Perhaps that's why I have a special affection for late summer bulbs in the garden. Bulbs after Christmas feel like a wonderfully guilty pleasure - like a chocolate bar sneaked just after finishing a perfectly good dessert.

Among the derelict wreckage of flagging phlox and deflated delphiniums there are all sorts of stragglers to add new life to the party just as conversation is flagging.

And these late arrivals knock the spots off their more punctual counterparts. Who needs the impotent trumpet of a daffodil when you can have the great trombone snouts of crinum lilies dripping with scent?

Crinums love a bit of moisture - at the very least a regular water, rather like the many true lilies which you can enjoy now.

Oriental lilies should have been put into pots of humus-rich compost back in November and if you remembered to do that then you might now be smugly engulfed in their sweet embrace.

Another variation on the theme is the scarborough lily, cyrtanthus. This still has a decent smell and is very good for picking. The reliable variety Red Prince is a searing hot gash of compact size which is useful for dibbling between cracks in sun-baked paving.

Unlike naked ladies (Amaryllis belladonna), which come up in dry shade under trees next month, the leaves and flowers of cyrtanthus seem not to have had an acrimonious divorce, so you can spot them coming out at the same time.

One unfamiliar bulb I came across recently in a friend's garden is Brunsvigia josephinae. Similar to naked ladies but even larger, the flowers are richly painted in shades of pink and each head is a vast candelabra of spidery blooms more than 1m tall emerging from great bulbs sitting on top of the soil.

This plant requires a hot baking and plenty of time for the bulbs to mature. But there are a couple of well-known shade-lovers which you shouldn't be without, especially if you have a taste for the tropical look.

Scadoxus multiflorus katherinae presents a starry ball of orange above bold foliage. This is a great bulb to feature with hen-and-chicken ferns under the canopy of a tree.

The blood lily (Haemanthus coccineus) is more a curiosity than an outright beauty. With its stiff, red paintbrush flowers emerging from bare earth it has more than a bit of triffid to its flowers - but plant a drift and the bold glossy leaves make a great textured groundcover for much of the rest of the year.

Spring crocus are great if you happen to live somewhere cold, but for those of us in milder places it's no hardship to have to survive with the much later white chalices of Zephyranthes candida. They flower for weeks in summer if given plenty of water and a sunny position. The leaves of this small, tough bulb are glossy, evergreen and compact so it makes a great decorative edging or feature "lawn". Its more choice cousin is Sternbergia - a bright gold crocus-like beauty that's best shown off in a raised bed or rockery in good soil.

I'm less decided whether to like or loathe another summer show-off. Nicknamed the jockey cap after their often richly speckled flower interiors, tigridias are exotic South American bulbs that will thrive wherever there is sun and a very well-drained soil.

But despite the beauty of their three-petalled cups, the Achilles heel is their rather gawky nature which means they are apt to fall over, and their zeal to seed means they can clog up any stretch of bare soil with rather pedestrian grassy leaves.

For me, an eucomis is a much better bet - just as exotic and longer-lasting in bloom or in a vase for six weeks. The leaves of these South Africans are as architectural as the chunky flower spikes. In Tugela Ruby the pink flowers blend nicely with purple leaves. Sparking Burgundy is the best-known purple but its flowers are so heavy that they can flop and it's best to prop each with a split bamboo cane. The dwarf E zambesiaca is pretty, but I like the reptilian subtlety of E bicolor with its green flowers and purple-blotched stems. Eucomis need mild climates and a rich but well-drained soil to do well. And like all classy bulbs they snub the spring crowds and turn up just when you need them most.

COULD DO THIS WEEK

* Don't fertilise plants in dry weather except with liquid feeds. Powdered and granular fertilisers can burn and damage leaves and roots in full sun.
* The dirty silver discolouration which sometimes appears on hydrangeas at this time of year may be caused by spider-mites. Treat leaves with a miticide as normal bug sprays will be ineffective.
* Epsom salts applied sparingly to cymbidium orchids now will promote flowerbud formation.
* Begin to take cuttings of tender plants which may be killed during a cold or wet winter. Pelargoniums, fuchsias, penstemons, gazanea and osteospermums are the sort of plants worth propagating as insurance against extreme weather.
* Sow seeds of perennials and biennials such as aquilegia, primrose and hollyhock so plants will be well established before winter.

GIVEAWAY

Stihl's CombiSystem solves the problem of a cluttered garden shed. It's a CombiEngine to which you can attach any one of 12 CombiTools. We have one CombiEngine and one CombiTool for grass-cutting to give away, valued at $920. To enter send your name and address to homes@heraldonsunday.co.nz or post to STIHL competition, Sunday Homes, PO Box 3290, Auckland, by February 24.