This time of year, I look forward to being cheered up by my front garden beds of montbretia which are interspersed with what was a low lavender hedge when I moved in to the garden years ago. The variery I have is probably the most standard type. I don't believe I have ever bought any of the crocosmia corms, more like my garden invasion started from a small clump given to me by my brother-in-law who loved to have them in his garden.
Part of the genus of the iris family, my corms set new bulblets every year and they have spread more than I really want them to. At times, when the long blades of the leaves overlap the edges of the grass they make it harder to mow the lawn, but I rarely have the heart to howk them out since I love the riot of colour when they flower.the fact that they are winter-hardy means they do survive the wet autums and cold winters that I can have in my garden- often the temperature difference in one day in winter being quite spectacular.
In the US, they are commonly known as coppertops or, I believe, sometimes 'falling stars' . In the UK we generally call them montbretia. They remain in flower for a few weeks around August, but when the leaves die back, a bit, I will have to dig up the clumps and separate them since they are now too well established. It'll be hard effort but worth it to give my lavender plants some more room alongside the montbretia.
Meanwhile, my writerly task today are to centre my mind on the new additions I need to make to get my time-travel novel for early tens up to scratch. At the moment it's a bit like my lavender which is being outshone right now. By that, I mean that there are parts of my time-travel novel which are too vigorous and not needed. A bit of culling of words is necessary to make the plot flow a lot better.
I'll let you know how that works out soon.
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| this photo is from autumn 2013 when both lavender and montbretia had ceased to flower |
Slainthe!
Gorgeous pictures!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous! My purple pond irises are a weed and so are the red hot pokers [knifofia] but I can't persuade montbretias to stay... even the nice bog standard ones, never mind Lucifer. rum do's eh.... however I was reading that lavender is short lived and rarely lives more then 4 years, fortunately nobody has ever told any of my lavender that, nor yours. Don't ever let your plants read anything from the RHS.
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah. Thanks for commenting. My lavender wouldn't be dying off if I had continued to leave it as a lavender only hedge. I agree that you cna't believe everything that you read.
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