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Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen on behalf of Expert Village. Lilly of the Nile or Agapanthus have
been found around the world for thousands of years. When you think of California or
beachfront resorts you always see lots of Agapanthus in bloom. Any time you have been
to California or San Diego or pretty much any tropical islands you will see them in
bloom. They are just beautiful, beautiful plants. Agapanthus are native to South Africa
where they grow wild in the mountains so they can handle a lot more cold than you think
they can. Twenty years ago if someone would have asked me if Agapanthus would winter over
in the Pacific Northwest I would have told them no way, it is too cold and they would
freeze out but thanks to global warming they are coming back year after year because our
winters are not nearly as cold as they used to be so now they are a perennial for us and
they are considered a bulb because they actually do go dormant in the winter and they die back,
the bulbs, and they come back in the Spring. They are really a very easy plant to grow.
An Agapanthus is actually a root or a root stock and it just has kind of a hard part
on the bottom and the shoots come out of the top and they have got to be root bound to
bloom so when I plant these guys I almost do three or four that are touching and crowded
together and then that way I get a bloom the first or second year. If you just put this
one by itself and never touch it, you might not get a bloom for two, three, five years,
whereas if you put either two, three, or five together you are probably going to get blooms
the first year. And as we all know when they have been there for 30 years you have so many
you do not know what to do with them because they really do multiply but it takes years.
They make a great cut flower and are just a beautiful addition to your garden. In the
next segment we will talk about another interesting plant, mondo grass.