After her rehabilitation of the tulip, writer Anna Pavord returns with a tour de force on bulbs
THE STARS OF our May and June garden this year were the alliums – specifically Allium 'Globemaster', a great beast of a thing brandishing purple cannonballs on metre-plus stems. In the past, I had looked at its melon-sized drumsticks in catalogues and thought: not for me, mate. Too big. Too blowsy. Too (let's call a spade a spade) vulgar. But when a couple dozen of them arrived unexpectedly in the post last autumn, I did an immediate about-turn and decided to give them a go (it's amazing how a gift can sometimes focus the mind in an entirely different direction). My friend, Grainne, suggested that we try them in the "wilderness", an area dominated by self-seeding pheasant grass ( Anemanthele lessoniana), and populated by other hard-chaws and thugs of plants. So she planted the bulbs in a sinuous river that would, we hoped, eventually flow pleasingly and purply through the vegetation.
When they shoved their fat noses out of the ground six months later, we were put out by the size of the buds, and the massive foliage, which – as is the way with most of the ornamental onions – appeared before the flower. Surely the ingenuous and natural look of our carefully-crafted wilderness would be destroyed by these overbred, oversized monsters?
But we need not have worried. By the time the alliums flowered, the pheasant grass had recovered from its spring chop, and the great purple balls of starry flowers hovered and bounced above a sea of green leaves. This is the only way, I think, to grow huge ornamental onions such as these. Anna Pavord, whose beauteous new book, Bulb(Mitchell Beazley, £30) has just been published, explains: "You need to arrange them so they float, like extra-terrestrials, over a sea of borrowed foliage, which will disguise their own quietly rotting leaves". Next year, she writes, the stems will be shorter, and the flowers smaller, which is the norm for most of the big alliums. They are rarely as spectacular in subsequent years.
Anna Pavord, just to remind you, wrote the excellent Tulip(published by Bloomsbury in 1999), a book that helped to rehabilitate a plant that was banned from posh gardens – except in selected forms – for so many years. Her latest offering is another tour de force, more than 500 pages long, and covering 100 genera of bulbous plants. The photographs, by that grand master of garden photography, Andrew Lawson, are delightful. Bulb arrived in the post, just as I was lamenting that the book that had served me well for years – Bulbs by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix – was more than 20 years old, and lacking the more modern cultivars (including my 'Globemaster' allium). I'll always have a special respect for Phillips and Rix (all their plant guides are superb), but I think that Pavord's book will become my new bulb bible.
Her section on alliums, for example, is 27 pages long, and gives detailed descriptions of 33 species and varieties, including, for each, cultivation requirements, season, habitat, height, hardiness and how to use in the garden. Every major genus – among them, Allium, Galanthus, Narcissus, Iris, Tulipa– has a lengthy preamble full of history and anecdote. A section at the back gives more cultivation recommendations, as well as advice on pests and diseases, and propagation. A "bulbs by season" guide allows you to plan a garden where there is a bulbous beauty in flower during every month of the year.
I love this book too, because it is a darn good read. Pavord's writing is never stuffy, but it is always authoritative. It is dappled with gently comical thoughts: "Modern gladioli belong with the diamante specs and knockout handbag of Dame Edna Everage"; "Sadly for gardeners, many fritillaries seem determined to die"; and on Hippeastrum(or amaryllis): "Do not be snooty about them . . . the whole point of them is their ludicrous size and their ability to knock you out from the far side of a room".
I agree with all these sentiments, and I also share Anna Pavord’s enthusiasm for all things bulbous, cormous and rhizomatous. Such plants are the horticultural equivalent of a pre-made gourmet dinner: all the ingredients are there in all the right amounts, and almost no effort is required of the individual to produce the desired result. Pop them in the ground, set the timer for one to six months, and out comes a flower. Delicious.
DIARY DATES:
Tomorrow, 2-5pm Hen Party at The Bay Garden, Camolin, Co Wexford, to mark the final open-day this year. Talks on keeping poultry. Hens and all accessories for sale. All plant prices reduced. www.thebaygarden.com; 053-9383349.
Tomorrow, 12-4pm Apple Day at Sonairte, Laytown, Co Meath: talks, tours of the orchard, apple trees for sale, apple identification, treasure hunt for children at 3pm. Admission: free. Details from www.sonairte.org; 041-9827572