Red Hot Pokers are goofy plants.

Folks either love ’em or hate ‘en.

Me?
I love ’em.

Here’s why:

•  The ‘red hot’ blooms remind me of Halloween candy corn from when I was a kid.

  

• Kniphofia grow happily on our rocky outcrop in very little soil…
  with very little moisture…
  So they’re super drought tolerant AND low maintenance, too.  Win, win!

• They’ve transplanted easily into partial-shade borders.  I like plants that are easy to grow.

  

• Hummingbirds & bees LOVE LOVE LOVE the blooms.

• The deer – – not so much.  Our local deer just ignore the Kniphofia     🙂

• Red Hot Pokers, aka Torch Lilies, are pretty much evergreen in Victoria – –  unless it snows.
  In which case they immediately turn to slime…
  Then come up fresh & green again when the weather calms down.  That works just fine for me.

  

The Red Hots I’m most familiar with  – – those with the graduated red + orange + yellow on one poker – –   bloom in our garden in May.

Last July I saw some blooming in  the Government House Gardens.  I immediately searched out a few summer bloomers for our place.

These varieties, likely Knifophia uvaria ‘echo mango’ and ‘echo rojo’ are  dwarf and have much narrower leaves. They’re designed to re-bloom throughout the growing season.

They also stayed green through the winter,  although they looked a little more dried & messy compared to the May bloomers.  Happily they bounced back in the spring sunshine.  Now they’re blooming !

The deer have nibbled a couple tender flower spikes, but I’m hoping that’s just curiosity, and they’ll leave the dwarf plants alone from now on.  Finger’s crossed.

To my amazement Abkhazi Garden had some Red Hot Pokers blooming near their front gate in December!
Who knew?

Isn’t that a Must Have?

Anyone know where I can source some of those??

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