Val Bourne on spectacular-looking flowering plants

When I first moved to this area, as a 16-year-old, I was really taken by the Michaelmas fairs held in Oxford and towns such as Warwick, Banbury and Stratford-upon-Avon.

The weather was often frosty and crisp and people always referred to this as ‘mop’ weather. The fairs, traditionally held once the harvest was finished, date from the time of Edward III (1312-77). He granted special charters following the Black Death, because there was a national shortage of labour that threatened being able to get the country’s harvest in. Hiring at these fairs went on until the early years of the 20th century and it’s thought that the word mop referred to the badges worn by those looking for work, not a housemaid’s mop. How the weather has changed in the last 30 or 40 years! Now the first frost in my garden often doesn’t occur until November, but my nerines love it. They look glorious in late October (and on into November) with their fresh, weather-resistant flowers defying the autumn rain. Nerine bowdenii is the one grown in gardens and it’s hardy enough to grow in sheltered, sunny positions as long as it has good drainage.

The origin of Nerine bowdenii was revealed in an article by Steve Eyre and Caroline Stone in a recent journal of The Nerine and Amaryllid Society. A certain Mrs Cornish-Bowden, of Black Hall at Avonwick, near Newton Abbot in Devon, was sent some nerine bulbs from South Africa in 1898 by her son Althelstan. He was working as a surveyor in the Cape Province and eventually became the Surveyor General responsible for laying out modern Cape Town. They flourished so she passed some bulbs to a fellow Devonian and nurseryman called Robert Veitch. He named them Nerine bowdenii in her honour and it’s very likely that she was the first person to grow nerines in Britain.

Nerines are South African bulbous plants found in summer-rainfall areas of The Cape where winters are dry and cool. The botanist John Grimshaw — writing in his blog, John Grimshaw’s Diary — identifies two distinct wild populations. Smooth-petalled, bright-pink nerines grow close to King William’s Town on the Eastern Cape, at about 400m above sea level. Most cultivated nerines resemble this King William’s Town type. A paler, frillier-petalled nerine grows 300-400 miles away on “the cliffs of the Drakensberg where Kwa-Zulu Natal meets the Free State at Mont aux Sources” to quote John Grimshaw. These basalt slopes are very steep.

Gardeners can acquire named forms of N. bowdenii from Bob Brown’s Cotswold Garden Flowers (www.cgf.net/01386 422829). Other types of nerine need a frost-free greenhouse. Most are named forms developed from N. sarniensis, a species collected from the mountains of the Cape Peninsula, including Table Mountain.

These have larger, more-spectacular flowers in a wider range of colours that includes geranium-red, salmon-pink and lilac-pink.

N. sarniensis was often pot-grown on large estates as a late flower for the house. They do make a good cut flower, although I can never bear to cut them. Nerine sarniensisis is also known as the Guernsey Lily, Sarnia being the Roman name for Guernsey.

Bulbs grew wild on the sand dunes of this Channel Island and it’s said they arrived there in the early 17th century when crates of bulbs were blown in following a shipwreck off Vazon.

The ship was en route from Japan so for many years the nerine was thought to be an oriental flower. By the 19th century these flowers were being harvested for Guernsey’s cut flower trade so they became known as Guernsey lilies. Another name is Jewel Lily, because the pigment-rich petals sparkle in the sunlight. This rich, concentrated pigment makes the flowers last a long time in the garden and vase.

One of the best nerine collections is held at Exbury Gardens near Southam-pton (www.exbury.co.uk/023 8089 1203), a famous garden founded by Lionel de Rothschild from 1912 onwards.