Tulips are nice but lilies are nicer.

Tulips are beautiful flowers, but they’re a little uptight, a little fussy, a little…dare I say it… repressed. And they’re expensive. I don’t want to knock tulips, because I know that if I grew a lot of them (and you need quite a few for any kind of impact) I’d come to love them. The thing is, lilies are so flamboyant, so east meets west, such good time flowers. You get a lot of flower for your money and they’re easy to propagate.

I haven’t had any success growing tulips. Maybe that’s the problem. To be honest, I didn’t try very hard to accomodate them. My flower garden is very ‘free range’. I throw plants at it and let them fend for themselves. Once upon a time I planted 3 tulip bulbs. They flowered once and apart from a few leaves appearing now and again I’ve never seen another flower. Tulips are little flowers and need a designated space that doesn’t get over shadowed by big blowsy plants. I guess that’s why people plant them in troughs and designated gardens.

Lilies are easy to grow in my garden. At least these orange ones are (in the photos above). They were planted by the previous owners so I don’t know their name. They look like they ought to be called after a woman like Gloria Swanson, Cleopatra or Suzy Wong. Most likely these orange lilies are an Asiatic variety because they’re early flowering, scentless and easy to grow. Also, they have sturdy stems and upward facing flowers.

I’ve divided the bulbs and moved them many times with little thought to their growing needs. They’re indestructible, thriving in semi-shade and full sun.

Incidentally, orange is an under appreciated flower colour in the garden. Sure everyone raves about orange in autumn: orange leaves and stems and rose hips. And everyone falls over themselves taking photographs of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, which are all about the colour orange. In my opinion, orange goes with everything.

Lilium asiatic ‘Black Out’ — *Lilium asiatic* ‘Black Out’

The long leaved plant in the terracotta pot (in the photo above) is called a pineapple lily Eucomis comosa ‘Tugela Ruby’. It’s a fake lily. More about the fakes later.

This lily is called Lilium asiatic ‘Black Out’. It’s an Asiatic lily. As you can see, the flower is dark red, not black, but like lots of people I got caught up in the fashion for, so called, ‘black’ flowers and foliage.

I have lots of other lilies, but they’re not flowering yet.

Lilies belong to the Liliaceae family - the lily family. There are 15 genera and 600 species. Fritillaries and tulips belong to the same family.

Another Asiatic species of lily. I’ve lost the tag and forgotten the name of it. Its flowers are almost black.

Lilium oriental ‘Pico’. — *Lilium oriental* ‘Pico’.

Oriental lilies flower from mid to late summer and are scented. The foliage and stems of my Orientals are much more delicate than the Asiatics. They get damaged more easily by the Wellington winds. I try to plant them in the middle of bigger, bushier plants to give them shelter and support. They’re taller than most of my other plants, which means they always find the light. If I were a more diligent gardener I’d stake them.

A wind battered Oriental lily growing horizontally in my flower garden.

I turned to Glad Mc Arthur for some advice on lilies.

A book I picked up at a book sale this year. Glad McArthur was a gardener and Garden Writer in New Zealand. She wrote a regular column for the Central Otago News from 1956-1992.

This is what Glad McArthur has to say. ‘The discovery by Wilson of Lilium regale in China at the beginning of this century (1905) was the beginning of the great popularity this flower has enjoyed during the last eighty years. This lily was easy to grow, trouble free, easily raised by seed, and so beautiful it gave fresh hope to gardeners who had found this flower difficult.

The lily is widely distributed across the northern hemisphere and at least eighty-seven species are found in the wild so it is clear that different lilies need vastly different conditions. Always try and give any plant the conditions which pertain when it is found growing in the wild. If one wishes to grow a number of different lilies in any one garden, it will be impossible for all of them to have the conditions of their natural habitat, so there will failures and successes which will make the failures worthwhile.

A general rule if such a thing is possible is this; the soil must be very well drained, porous and friable, and must contain a large quantity of humus.’

Daylily Hemerocallis. — Daylily *Hemerocallis*.

Daylilies divided and transplanted into the front garden.

Daylilies used to belong to the Liliaceae family but not any more. Now they belong to the Asphodelaceae family, also known as the daylily family. Other members of this family include Kniphofia (red-hot pokers) and Phormium (New Zealand flax). There are 900 species in this family and half of them are in the succulent genus Aloe.

I planted a daylily many years ago. It has dark red flowers. For a long time it grew larger and flowered prolifically. Then it lost its spark. So, in winter I dug it up and split it. I got a lot of new plants from the old plant. I planted the new plants in the front garden. I should’ve done my homework. They’re putting on a lacklustre performance. The simple reason is that daylilies need half a day of full sunshine. These poor guys get three hours if they’re lucky. No wonder they’re not thriving. Many true lilies, on the other hand, would be happy if planted in the same places.

Daylilies produce a lot of flowers and when they’re planted in the right place their foliage is lush. I learnt that daylily flowers are edible. You can eat them raw or cooked. The same isn’t true for true lilies. I know that some of them are poisonous.

This is commonly called the Peruvian lily. It’s proper name is Alstoemeria. It belongs to the Astroemeriaaceae family, which comes from South America. Carl Linnaeus named the plant after his close friend, Swedish baron Clas Alströmer. Maybe Clas gave Carl a lot of money for his research, maybe Clas’s son married Carl’s daughter, assuming Carl had a daughter and Clas a son, whatever the reason I bet Clas never set foot in South America.

The long leaved plant in the terracotta pot is called a pineapple lily Eucomis comosa ‘Tugela Ruby’. — The long leaved plant in the terracotta pot is called a pineapple lily *Eucomis comosa* ‘Tugela Ruby’.

My final fake lily is the pineapple lily Eucomis comosa. I have two different types. They belong to the Asparagaceae family. Some of the more famous family members are asparagus, hostas and spider plants. Only one of my pineapple lilies has flowered. Probably because I’ve planted them in spots that are too damp and don’t get enough sun.

One of my agapanthus that refused to be dug out.

My dermatologist is a keen gardener. During my yearly check we were discussing plants and the year that’s been. Wellington has had a mild more-or-less frost free winter with tons of rain. My dermatologist has an acre of garden full of unusual plants, many of which are hardy and can be happily pruned with a chainsaw. Despite the ideal winter my dermatologist lost her gunnera. It up and died on her quickly, with no sign that it’d been anything other than happy and healthy. She was very sad about the loss of the gunnera. She’d had it for years. I asked why she didn’t buy another or get a plant from a gardening friend. Surely her husband, who breeds plants, must know someone who grows them. ‘They’re banned,’ she told me. ‘You can’t buy them or give them away.’

And this is how I found out that a number of plants that I’d considered ordinary garden plants had become outlaws. Gunnera, along with agapanthus has joined the criminal ranks along with notable killers like broom, gorse and Darwin’s barberry. Biosecurity New Zealand keeps a register of all plants that are a threat, pose a threat or are invasive to agriculture or biodiversity. It makes for interesting reading. I wasn’t surprised to see that my sycamore tree appeared on the wanted list.

I have a number of agapanthus growing in my garden. I’ve dug up dozens of them and went through a period of hating them like I’d been told to. They’re a terrible weed right?

Last week I read a thought provoking article online called ‘On the Verges’ by the garden writer Abbie Jury. It was originally published in New Zealand Gardener. She wrote it 8 years ago but it’s still relevant in 2018. Abbie puts forward a good argument on why we should allow plants like agapanthus to grow on road verges and other wasteland places. These hardy flowering plants (along with orange-red crocosmias, yarrow, fennel and other ‘weeds’) create wildlife corridors that don’t need to be mowed or poisoned with weedkiller. These wildlife corridors help with water drainage and stabilise banks, not to mention providing food for bees and other beneficial insects.

It’s important to protect New Zealand’s native ecology in habitats such as forests, wetlands and seashores. But there’s a lot of New Zealand that has become a wasteland thanks to urbanisation and agriculture. Think about the hundred of kilometres of grass verges and bare hillsides. Councils and local authorities don’t have the money or people power to reforest these places with the sort of plants that originally resided there. And even if they did they don’t have the money or people available to maintain these areas. Their solution is weedkiller. Abbie’s solution is agapanthus.