Scilla peruviana

  Loren wote:
 >>       I picked up both species for the first time while cruising
 >> end-of-season discount bins.  I know that S.peruviana can be grown
 >> outside in western Oregon. But what kind of temperatures can the foliage
 >> take? Any other suggestions about siting this species?


 and John wrote:

 >Dear Loren,
 >Scilla peruviana seems very hardy in southern England and its foliage
 >takes no harm from frost. This summer, with constant watering, the leaves
 >of mine remained green throughout, and are only just dying back as the
 >new ones emerge.

 I'll endorse that. My Scilla peruviana have sailed through the cold of
 last winter and continue to grow well at the moment, even though we are
 getting regular nightly frosts. However, they don't seem to flower well -
 I suspect that lack of enough sun / summer heat is a problem.


 >The winter-growing plant I'm worried about at present is a Watsonia whose
 >corms came home with me from my garden in Tanzania. After a couple of
 >years in a pot I had had enough of its floppy leaves so I decided to
 >plant it out, whereupon it promptly went dormant. Now, in the middle of
 >winter, the stupid thing is poking up and just asking for frostbite in
 >sensitive parts. Is it just me, or is it general experience that
 >Watsonias hate disturbance?

 I have not found them to hate disturbance, but they do seem to need winter
 protection. Like you, my W.borbonica are just coming up through their
 mulch of bracken and I am equally concerned; however, they are coping with
 the frosts so far. I also bought a white gladiolus (I can't find the label
 unfortunately, but it's a rather delicate one, like a cross between
 G.papilio and G.callianthus, but with narrow grey leaves) which also
 promptly died back last summer and is sprouting now just in time for the
 frosts.....

 Watsonias do seem to be on the edge of their hardiness here. When I
 visited Garden House two years ago, they had just planted a new bed in
 which Watsonias were very much in evidence. I returned this spring and
 walked past where they had been, but there was none in sight. Presumably
 the frost had got them - Garden House is a good bit higher up than we are
 and the extra frost probably did for them. They grow lovely meconopsis on
 the acid soil though (sigh!)

 Tristan
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