Alstroemeria

Alstroemeria is a wonderful perennial! Yeah, I usually post about terrible plants ;-) There used to be only tallish(maybe 30 inches or so) Alstroemerias around in nurseries and people's gardens that were beautiful as cut flowers. Now found in nurseries are shorter versions(12 inches tall) that look great in the garden. Native to South America, they come in pink, red, purple, orange and yellow and like full sun and well-drained soil. This is one that I divided from a client's garden(thanks Joanne!) in January and it's doing great! I still don't understand why the plants are so expensive in nurseries; a 2 gal size might be $20.00! They are so easy to divide and transplant. The only thing I dislike about them is that some die back for a little while in the summer. The best way to get cut flowers from this plant is to just pull the stems straight out from the ground. That saves the old stems from rotting and keeps the plant looking clean. I had a few stems from this plant in a vase and it lasted 2 weeks!