In My Garden

Nerine bowdenii

Arran hosts incomer plants from all over the world, many of which fit in to the landscape as if to the manner born and speak with an integrated Scottish accent. But not nerine bowdenii.

This plant never learnt the lingo of Scottish horticulture. At the end of summer, sensible garden plants batten down the hatches to escape the gales and rain, assume the colour of tweeds and raincoats, and cringe from rough Autumn weather like the rest of us. But not nerines.

Nerines hide underground through a Scottish summer , in a bulb the size of a tangerine. Come late September they leap out of bed stark naked, flashing bright pink crimped flesh. Each gale-proof two-foot stem bears a curvily exotic fist sized umbel until late October. There used to be a fabulous annual display of nerine bowdenii at the south end of Lamlash. From its size it must have been a very old colony of bulbs Sadly disappeared after the place was tidied up.

No matter where you place nerines in the garden, they are going to look completely contrived and unnatural; but nothing is going to deter them. It’s only just over a century since Bowden introduced them to Britain from their homeland in the Drakensburg mountains of South Africa. You’d think they might appreciate a well drained sunny spot in Scotland, but I find my earliest plantings brazenly poking out from dense wet shade and still increasing sturdily. No feeding, shelter or pampering required; they increase underground with no assistance.