Blue-chip performance

THERE are certain plants that weave their way into one's affections over a period of years. For me, agapanthus is one such beauty. The African lily is its most frequently used common name, but Lily of the Nile bestows upon it an even greater air of exoticism, even if the river is hundreds of miles distant from the plant's South African home.

- Alan Titchmarsh

In my Yorkshire childhood in the 1950s, I don't recall ever encountering it. It wasn't until the late 1960s at Kew Gardens that I first came to know the more tender species, planted alongside Decimus Burton's Palm House, where they enjoyed the shelter and radiated heat that palace of glass provided. There are about 10 species of agapanthus, but most modern hybrids seem to be derived from crosses involving Agapanthus praecox, A.campanulatus and the more tender A. africanus.

Time was when these clump-forming plants with strappy leaves and umbels of flower held on stiff drumstick stems were rightly considered to be only partially hardy—surviving mild winters in mild counties and in need of winter protection if they were to come through unscathed. Then along came the Headbourne Hybrids, which exhibited a greater hardiness. They were bred in the 1940s and 1950s by the Hon Lewis Palmer, son of the 2nd Earl of Selborne, at Headbourne Worthy near Winchester in Hampshire and led the way to the emergence of a wide range of varieties with constitutions that are tough enough to withstand most British winters.