Nothing else we sell looks like eremurus in June. The foxtail lily sends up spires well over a metre tall, each a dense column of hundreds of tiny star flowers that light up from the base and climb, orange or gold, over a couple of weeks. This is back of border architecture, not a front row bulb, and it is the plant visitors stop and ask about. Too few gardeners grow it, which is a pity we like to put right.
When Does Eremurus Flower
Early summer, June into July. It comes just as the spring bulbs bow out and before the border has properly woken for summer, filling a gap most gardens have. The spire opens from the bottom up, a few stars at a time, and keeps going for a fortnight. Height is the whole point of it: Cleopatra to a hundred and twenty five centimetres, Tap Dance taller still, both standing well clear of whatever grows around them.
How Do You Plant The Crown
A crown, not a bulb, and that changes how you plant. Out of the bag comes a pale star of thick, fragile roots joined at one central point, and the whole thing goes in barely below the surface. Build a low mound of sharp grit, settle the crown on top, splay the roots down its sides, and draw a few centimetres of soil back over. Work gently here. Snap a root and you have thrown away part of the plant.
What Soil And Position Does It Want
It wants sun on its back and dry feet under it. Eremurus grew up on the steppes of central Asia, parched and hot all summer, and it never made peace with a wet English winter. Cold it shrugs off. A crown sitting in cold mud from November to spring it will not, and that is the thing that rots it, so keep it off heavy clay and out of any hollow that holds water. A gravel bed or a raised sunny bank is the answer. Then stop touching it, because moving it costs you a year of flower.
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Do The Tall Spires Need Staking
The tall spires catch the wind, so in an open spot a cane slipped in early does no harm. The strappy leaves come up around the base, do their work and then die back as it flowers, which looks tired for a few weeks, so the old trick is to set eremurus towards the back of a border where something lower in front hides the gap. Beyond that it asks nothing of you at all.
Which Eremurus Should You Choose
Two to choose from just now, and they could hardly be more different. Cleopatra is the apricot orange one, the colour of a sunset and the picture that comes to mind the instant someone says foxtail lily. Tap Dance is a clear golden yellow on a slightly taller spire, cooler and easier to place among other colours. Plant either in a group of three or five rather than singly. One spire is a curiosity. Five together are a spectacle.
Plant These With Your Eremurus
Eremurus wants tall company that shares its love of sun and sharp drainage. Alliums flower with it at much the same height, lilies pick up the vertical line as it fades, and gladioli carry the drama on into late summer.
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