Camassia is the bulb for the ground that defeats every other bulb. It comes from the damp prairies of the American northwest, and it wants the one thing most bulbs cannot bear, a heavy soil that holds its moisture well into spring, so the low wet corner where tulips rot is the very place camassia is happiest. In late May it throws up tall spikes of starry flowers, blue or white, right in the gap after the daffodils and before the border proper gets going. Our catalogue called them vigorous. They are.
When Does Camassia Flower
Late May and on into June, which is the cleverest thing about it. That is the flat fortnight in a garden when the tulips and daffodils are finished and the border has not yet started, and a stand of camassia at ninety centimetres in soft blue is exactly what the moment wants. The flowers are stars, dozens to a spike, opening from the bottom upward over a couple of weeks. Nothing else this tall flowers so early.
Will It Grow In Wet Or Clay Soil
This is the whole point of the plant, and it is worth being plain about it. Nearly every bulb we sell is packed off to a dry summer and rots if the ground stays wet, which is why most bulb advice is really drainage advice in disguise. Camassia is the opposite case. It grew in meadows that lie under snowmelt and flood water every spring, so heavy clay, a low damp bed, the bottom of the garden that never quite dries out, all the spots that see off a tulip, are the ones it settles into and thrives. Plant it where you have lost bulbs to wet before.
Where Does The Name Quamash Come From
From the people who ate it. Camas, or quamash, was one of the most important foods of the native peoples of the American northwest, who dug and roasted the bulbs in their thousands, and the word esculenta on one of ours means no more than edible. Whole prairies were once tended for the harvest. We grow it for the flower rather than the table, but it is a good thing to know you are planting a small piece of that history.
Spend and Save
The more you plant, the more you save. The discount applies to your whole order, and delivery is free over £100.
How Do You Plant Camassia
Eight centimetres deep and about twelve apart, bulbs going in through the autumn. Plant in numbers, because the flowers read as a haze of blue from any distance and a haze needs quantity, a dozen at the least and more where the ground allows. It asks nothing of you after that. It is fully hardy, deer and rabbits leave it alone, and given the damp it likes it thickens into a strong clump and seeds itself gently about.
Can You Naturalise It In Grass
Better than almost anything, so long as you can wait to mow. Camassia was made for long grass and rises through a rough meadow or an orchard floor as though it grew there wild, which in its own country it does. The one rule is the rule for daffodils as well, that the leaves must be left to yellow and die right down before the grass is cut, which means holding the mower until the middle of summer. In a wild corner that is no hardship at all.
Which Camassia Should You Choose
Height first. The tall ones are the leichtlinii, up to about ninety centimetres, and there are three to choose between. Alba is the creamy white that Gardeners’ World featured, the pick of the lot for a pale planting, Caerulea a rich violet blue, and Blue Candle a softer light blue on looser spikes. Any of the three stands at the back of a border or out in grass and carries real height with it.
For something lower, the blues. Esculenta is the true quamash, a deep rich blue at about thirty centimetres, the one that gives you the haze in quantity for the least outlay, and Blue Melody is a seldom seen sort with deep blue flowers over variegated foliage, which is unusual in a camassia and earns it a spot near the front where the leaves can be seen. Both stand a third the height of the leichtlinii and open at the same moment.
What To Plant With Camassia
Alliums, before anything else. Both are up together in late May at much the same height, and the round drumstick heads among the tall blue spires make a pairing you meet in every good garden that month, for good reason. Out in grass, cow parsley and buttercups do the rest and ask nothing. In a border, late tulips hold the same fortnight. Plant camassia in enough quantity and the rest arranges itself around it.
Bloms Private Membership
Free postage for a full year. It comes free with any order over £100, or you can add it at checkout for £9.95.