Amaryllis; Indoor beauty for the winter

With its huge, brilliant, long-lasting blooms, amaryllis is well worth cultivating. This is especially true when you can keep them year after year. With a little space outside to fatten the bulb over the summer, you can make these beauties a treat you look forward to every winter.

Set in a pool of sunshine in our kitchen in deep winter, one Amaryllis bulb provided this glorious sight.

While not fragrant, these bulbs more than make up for that deficit with huge visual appeal!

In order to keep your bulbs blooming each year, it is important to think of them as a crop, rather like an onion. After all frost danger in the spring, take the bulbs out of their pot and replant them in a well-prepared garden bed with ample sun, water, and nutrients. Allow them to grow there until just before the first frost in the fall. Then repot them (they may need slightly larger pots) in well-drained potting soil and bring inside. Remove only damaged leaves; do not take off all the foliage. With this treatment you can have flowers every year from the same bulb, which makes the rather hefty price tag ($8 to$20 each) a little more tolerable!

These African flowers have been greatly altered by many years of selection, particularly by Dutch plant breeders. They come in a range of colors, from white, pale pink, apricot, coral, orange, scarlet, red, burgundy, to almost black. Lovely blends, stripes, and picotee markings have been achieved, and some have a green throat, which I especially like. Some are quite tall, and with their top-heavy blossoms may require staking. Much shorter varieties are also available, which may be more practical. To me these look a bit out of proportion.

Fancy double flowers with ornately recurving petals and delicate coloration are the ultimate in amaryllis beauty. I love the sculptural quality of the huge petals. I have also been amazed by the iridescent rainbow sheen on the petals in the sunlight seen only with close examination. These are almost magically enlarged flowers, making me think of Georgia O'Keefe and Alice in Wonderland. How could you not love them?

In winter when the gardens in Santa Fe lie dormant, we keep 20 or more amaryllis bulbs in separate pots in a sunny laundry room for Mrs. B's delight. Each year it seems she can't resist getting one or two more. As the buds begin to emerge we bring them into her sunroom, where they are placed to good advantage.

With the grande dame amaryllis blooms interspersed among other winter flowering plants, such as hibiscus, jasmine, and bougainvillea, the sunroom becomes a glorious jungle! Some of the plants are deliberately chosen for fragrance, which makes up for the showier blossoms' lack of scent.

As you can see from the bouquet of freshly picked daffodils, this photo was taken in April. The Amaryllis collection at LQ comes into bloom over a five or six month period, which means that one or two bulbs will be in bloom at any given time throughout the cold months. Note the stakes on these long-stemmed flowers, as well as the abundant foliage, which I feel adds to their appeal. So this season adopt an amaryllis, give it a good home with year-round love, and it will return that love with a gift of beauty that will brighten your winters for many years to come!