Despite their reputation for being hard to grow and infuriatingly easy to kill, foxtail lilies are spectacular and desirable plants for sunny borders or gravel gardens with well-drained soil
WORDS MATTHEW WILSON
FACT FILE What Bulbous perennials. Commonly known as desert candles or foxtail lilies. A genus made up of 59 species.
Season Early to midsummer.
Size Up to 2.5m high (flower spike), 50cm-1m across.
Conditions Well-drained soils, pH neutral, acid or alkaline, full sun and a sheltered spot.
Origins Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, northwest China.
Hardiness Given the right conditions, Eremurus are hardy throughout the UK and suitable for gardens in USDA zones 5a to 8b.
*Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society.
†Hardiness ratings given where available.
EREMURUS HIMALAICUS
I planted this in the Dry Garden at RHS Hyde Hall, where it still thrives. A truly statuesque beauty with white flowers on tall spikes. Height and spread: 2.5m x 45cm. RHS H6, USDA 5a-8b†.
Picture the scene. Dawn breaks over the desolately beautiful Tien Shan and Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. Miles of dusty, rubble-strewn desert, seemingly empty of any living thing. And then the half-light illuminates the tall inflorescences of hundreds upon hundreds of plants, punctuating the arid land, reaching skyward on stout stems nearly 2m tall, smothered in lightly fragrant flowers: Eremurus.
My introduction to Eremurus came closer to home. In my first summer as curator of RHS Garden Hyde Hall in Essex, back in June 2000, the sight of more than 600 Eremurus robustus in a west-facing border was quite a treat. What was even more remarkable is that those 600-plus plants were all self-seeded from just a dozen original crowns, planted in the late 1960s by the founding owners of the garden, Helen and Dick Robinson.
While Essex isn’t exactly Uzbekistan, it is one of the driest parts of the UK – and that west-facing border gets baked by the sun. The soil there, in contrast to the heavy clay across the rest of the site, has some gravel in it and drains well. And the only real competition the Eremurus had there were some old shrub roses, meaning there was plenty of space around the crowns, good air circulation and limited shade.
There are 59 accepted species of Eremurus, although less than half are widely commercially available, and of those, some are primarily available as cut flowers rather than garden plants. Their flower colours range fr
