agapanthus | why sarah loves these

Sarah discusses her favourite agapanthus for borders and pots.

I love agapanthus, they’re like alliums of the summer aren’t they, you know, sort of like great firework, crazy sparkler flowers, and they flower even longer than alliums, and their seedpods equally good, but of course unlike alliums which are bulbs, these are true perennials, this is a variety I adore called ‘Queen Mum’, which is along the south face of the house, it’s very well drained here, kind of almost like builder’s rubble.


These have taken two years to come up to flower but you can see now are just covered in flower for the whole of July, August into September, and ‘Queen Mum’ is this beautiful one that’s basically white, but it’s got this beautiful blue staining at the base of the flower, and all the pollinators love these, they’re continually busy with hoverflies particularly, but bees and butterflies too, so that’s ‘Queen Mum’, and then a rather unusual, sort of smoky, very soft grey-blue colour is this one which is called ‘Windsor Grey’, and it is kind of grey. It’s a little bit earlier, it flowers two or three weeks earlier than ‘Queen Mum’ and you can see it’s just beginning to go over now, but it’s still pretty spectacular, and this beautiful strange, slightly sort of edgy colour of silvery grey.


And then the best of the blues, in my view is this small-headed, very delicate one which is perfect for pots, which is agapanthus ‘Navy Blue’, sometimes called ‘Midnight’ or ‘Midnight Blue’, and you can see the difference in the scale between those two, it really is delicate, but it’s wonderful in a pot for that very reason, with really lovely, almost chive-like leaves, and it thrives with it’s roots contained, as you get in a container.


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