'Jester' Flax Lily Plants

Phormium tenax 'Jester' Flax Lily Plants. 3 Litre Pots

A natural performer in the garden with its mix of dusky pink, red and green strips of colour on its foliage adding a bit of colourful theatre garden.
Phormiums do not flower reliably in Britain. It flowers only occasionally but when it does, it's worth the wait with its striking, tall blood-red blooms.

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Features

• Leaves with salmon pink centres and green margins.
• Flowers irregularly. Blood red, around July
• Grows on the coast
• Hardiness rating H4
• Height x Spread: 1m x 1m

Growing 'Jester' Phormiums

Phormiums love a sunny, well-drained location with light, loamy soil. With a hardiness rating of H4 from the RHS, they are suitable for most of Great Britain, apart from the colder inland and Northern areas of Scotland.

Tidy in Spring by pruning out the biggest / oldest and most winter-damaged leaves, cutting them at the bottom - if you trim the leaves higher up, they will look ragged and unsightly. Make a diagonal cut flush with the base of the other leaves, rather than a flat cut, which will leave a straggly little stub.

This pruning requires reaching down inside the foliage, which has pointed tips, so wearing proper work goggles or face shield is recommended when working with mature plants. Secateurs are all you need, but for cutting off unwanted shoots on well established plants, a grape harvesting hook (a type of small, sharp serrated sickle) is nifty for slicing them easily at soil level without dulling your secateurs.

Dividing a big phormium clump is easier with a sharp, sturdy spade to help you dig around all around it, and then lift the whole rootball. Once it's out, it will be easier to see where to break the clumps apart from one another by splitting them with the spade: the rhizomes are very tough but come apart from each other with some firm spade and bodyweight effort, wiggling it into the natural gaps between the clump sections as you go - if your spade is dull after digging, sharpening it will make this work a lot easier.

At the end of dividing a big clump, you may choose to trim the leaves down to stumps in order to help the roots establish. Doing this will give you a bigger plant in subsequent years at the cost of having nice looking leaves this and next year.

In Your Garden Design

The beauty of phormiums is that they can be paired more or less with any plant as long as they enjoy each other's conditions. This, with its wonderful display of colour, makes a particularly witty and fun addition to any garden. As a rule upright phormiums such as these work as good architectural structures at the back of the border in formal or contemporary planting schemes and the arched varieties work in softer, meadow-like schemes. Pair this one with dahlias that follow its colour range, such as combining American Dawn with Brown Sugar. Partner with a Lime Marmalade Heuchera or two and Dianthus Tickled Pink and soften with lovely tall grasses behind, such as 'Pink Feather'.