Sarah's favourite muscari
Watch to discover Sarah's favourite types of muscari and why she loves them
I’m a big fan of grape hyacinth, the muscari family and there’s lots of breeding that’s gone on with them in the last few years with an ever increasing range. We’ve had a trial here this year and I’ve totally adored them. We’ve tried them in three roles mainly. The first that we’ve tried is armeniacum, which actually, I planted in the garden here edging a path, now twenty years ago and they’ve gradually spread into what must be 200. The stronger more robust varieties, naturalise absolutely brilliantly so they’re really good, general garden spring bulbs. The next one, which again, is best in the garden really, naturalised, is latifolium. And it’s sometimes called the Oxford and Cambridge grape hyacinth because it’s got the two colours of the universities like in the boat race. It’s rather distinguished somehow; I love that one. And then we’ve also been trialling this variety called ‘Valerie Finnis’ which is famously good for grass and like a cowslip or a narcissus will gradually naturalise into your lawn. The second thing of course, is that they make beautiful cut flowers and they last for 7-10 days in a vase. Really good, particularly if you keep them cool and obviously it’s quite a small delicate thing and I tend to arrange them in a sherry glass or maybe even an egg cup they look lovely. I’ve found that they’re fantastic for spring weddings, for bridesmaids because you can wire them into flower crowns and they’re just the right sort of scale and beauty. There’s a variety called ‘Baby’s breath’ which we use a lot for that. But perhaps, my favourite thing this year has been growing lots and lots of different varieties. Big ones and small ones in containers, and we’ve got them on their own like this which I think is rather sort of chic, this one is called ‘Siberian Tiger’ which is a sort of almost pure white and also using them as an understorey in bigger containers with things like narcissus growing above them. They form almost like in the wild, a sort of beautiful bulb carpet through which the other bulbs can come. Overall they’ve got so many different uses and I’m a big fan.
