Peruvian treasures for everyone

Now all gardeners can enjoy alstroemerias

A new generation of the exotic lily alstroemeria means anyone can enjoy the ‘Aston Martin’ of the garden, says Gardening Which? today.

The new garden varieties require minimal attention, stay neat and upright, and can fill a garden with dazzling, flamboyant colour from early June until the first hard frost.

Traditionally, alstroemerias only flowered for a short spell in early summer and were difficult to establish. 

They have been popular as prized cut flowers, but modern methods of breeding mean that an exciting range of the Peruvian flowers are now widely available for all gardeners to enjoy.

Exciting range

Gardening Which? magazine recommends that the green-fingered get busy and start planting their alstroemerias now.  Some of the best include:

• compact alstroemerias - perfect colour for the front of your borders, they’re suited to containers which can bring summer-long colour to your patio
• knee-high varieties - offering the best of both worlds, the range of colours is suitable to stun in a vase or can be put in containers
• long-stemmed alstroemerias - at around 1m tall, they’ll provide a constant, colourful background for the backs of your borders and last the whole of the summer.

Chaun Dunford of Gardening Which? said: ‘Alstroemerias are the Aston Martins of the garden. Stylish, sophisticated, and now they’re easy to grow - they’ll give any garden some va va voom!’