The Pool Plant Nobody Thinks Of – Crinum for Foliage

A client called wanting pots for around his pool. He’d made the wise investment of Italian terra cotta. He didn’t want flowers, exactly — he was tired of things that bloom two weeks and sulk the other fifty. He wanted something that just looked good, up close, where you’re sitting in a wet swimsuit judging every leaf.

‘Maiden’s Blush’ is what I told him. ‘Definitely the one you want.’

Crinums have a reputation — rangy, floppy, better for the ditch than the patio. This one breaks it. Compact, two to three feet, blue-green leaves in a clean fountain shape, no flower required to earn its spot. Then in August, when everything else has quit for the summer, it blooms anyway: white trumpets with a bit of pink on each petal. Honestly, you have to cut them to see the pink.

A Texas breeder named Thad Howard made the cross, Sri Lankan crinum onto South African — details and years of bulb work nobody thinks about by the pool. But it does make a delicate, sweetly fragrant cut flower. I took a few in to Momma just yesterday — here’s a photo.

Crinums like being a little pot-bound anyway, so a big container isn’t a compromise. Water it through summer, forget about it over winter, and it’s back next August doing the same trick.

Get one of your own: Crinum ‘Maiden’s Blush’.