One of the most recognizable flowers in South Africa, the agapanthus is a Lowveld staple, used in home gardens and shop gardens to add a touch of cool blue during the usually stinking hot summer months.
My own journey with agapanthus is a personal one. During my childhood, my grandmother had the most fabulous garden packed full of these flowers, and while most people associate the blooming jacaranda tree with the start of the holidays, for me it is the agapanthus.
From October through to January, our garden would be a fantastic show of blue flowers which would keep their shape and colour for months on end, attracting bees and other summertime insects. When the flowers started to die off, I knew that the summer holiday was coming to a close, and I’d be returning to school.
Many years later when we moved to our new property, the agapanthus came with and for years they bloomed religiously in the garden, until the arrival of the puppies. Their curious little noses took them straight into the agapanthus garden bed and they stomped the plants into oblivion. While this probably wouldn’t have been a huge issue, the same year the pups arrived we had a bit of a dry summer, and so began my battle to save the agapanthus.
I had two motivations for working as hard as I could to revive the bed. The first reason was that my grandmother spent a lot of her time reading by her bedroom window, which overlooked this garden bed, and she loved to see the agapanthus flowering. They were her pride and joy.
The second reason was because I love these flowers too, and when the bed was rather bare, and the dirt could be seen, it got me down.
Now we could have gone out and bought new plants and had that instant satisfaction, but the price of these plants makes it difficult to replace 20 of them. And although I’d have loved to immediately have blooms that summer, I am stubborn and wanted the plants we had to come back to life.
So we dug up every single one of the plants in September that year. My gran was worried about our plans, but through a lot of tiring effort, we replenished the bed with compost, divided the plants, and had stunning blooms by December.
But not a year later, I took on 3 more pups, to help out a friend while he was at work (I work from home) and they, much like my own monsters, destroyed the garden once again. I will admit, I was devastated.
I took some solace in the knowledge that my grandmother had been able to enjoy one more showing of the agapanthus before her passing the following April, but that also made the ruined plants hurt a bit more, because I felt as though I had let her down somehow.
I did what I could and trained the pups to stay out of the garden, and although we didn’t have irrigation at that point, we did our best to keep things watered. And when spring rolled around, we decided to buy a load of compost and we lifted each agapanthus again and replanted them.
Big mistake
It is recommended that you only lift your agapanthus once every 4 years, and this was the second time in 2 years that we had lifted ours. Initially they looked quite good, but then the heavy rains hit. Half of them rotted, and the other half was attacked by snails and ants.
The plants did nothing that year. They looked sad and there wasn’t a single flower. All those gorgeous green leaves were nothing like their former selves, and there was a moment when I really thought I’d lose all the plants.
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I decided to leave the plants just where they were and to focus on giving them some love. I started with a more regular, longer watering session, and when winter was on its way, I surrounded the base of each plant with compost. Just before spring, I worked some fertilizer into the ground and I made sure to fight off the snails, the moment I saw the damage being done.
The work seemed to pay off, as a few buds started forming on some of the plants once the summer heat and humidity arrived. But there is still a lot of care to be given to return these beautiful flowers back to their full former glory.
Growing New Agapanthus
Since we lost so many of our beautiful agapanthus plants, my mission has been to replace them, somehow.
As I mentioned before, buying fully grown agapanthus plants is an expensive business, although it is really tempting to do. Agapanthus in blues, dark purples, white, and a mix of white and blue, are all the kinds I want to add to our garden, but alas, each, especially the rare kind, come with a hefty price tag. And I need a lot of them.
In the midst of my agapanthus revival project, one night at a friend’s birthday party, I noticed that they had left their agapanthus plants to go to seed, something my grandmother had never allowed. I didn’t even realise that agapanthus produce seed, so imagine my excitement.
I collected a small handful of seeds, and although it was April and we were going into winter soon, I planted them a few containers, not expecting much. About 4 weeks later, I had tough little shoots coming up. I left them in a shaded spot for the winter, and then when the spring started I moved them to a sunnier spot.
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By November, I had plants ready for the garden. I gave the seeds no special attention. I just dumped them in a light compost and kept them moist. The shaded spot really helped, because they didn’t dry out and they got a good dose of late afternoon winter sunlight, but other than that, they were left to just do their thing.
I know this route isn’t the fastest one, and it might take a year or more to see these plants take off, but watching them grow through each season is part of the fun.
Agapanthus plants are always going to have a place in my garden and in my heart. Their blooms will be a constant reminder of simpler times and a reminder that summer always comes back. And if you are battling with yours, know that with patience and perseverance, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
