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How to succeed with winter’s most exotic houseplant

Garden beat

Where do you stand on amaryllis? This beautiful flowering bulb,

A little knowledge goes a long way with amaryllis. Photos by kc kratt.

a native of South Africa, is technically called hippeastrum, but for decades it has been known to most gardeners as amaryllis. It’s sold in garden centers and offered by bulb catalogs every fall—many give it as a holiday gift. And therein lies the problem: If you’re an amaryllis newbie, coaxing them into repeat flowering every year is a formidable challenge.

Fortunately, we have amaryllis experts right here in Buffalo who can advise on how to make your plants bloom every year. Lacy Abbott, former owner of the much-missed Elmwood Avenue garden shop, Diggin’ It, currently has sixty-seven of these plants, almost all of which bloom for her every year, creating a beautiful show in her Delaware District sunroom. Clearly, she knows what to do, and it boils down to a few simple rules.  

Buy top-size bulbs from a trusted vendor. Pot them up very tightly (in a pot only slightly bigger than the bulb), with the top of the bulb visible above the soil. Use clean pots and new soil to avoid disease. Water thoroughly but infrequently—only when they are dry—and keep them in a sunny room.

Give them some water-soluble fertilizer after bloom, and allow leaves to grow and wither naturally. Don’t cut them off. Four leaves must grow in order to replenish the bulb, and provide enough energy for rebloom. They can be brought outside in summer or not. (Abbott leaves her inside.)

Here’s the tricky part. Abbott gives the plants twelve weeks of dormancy starting in mid-late August. She keeps hers in a not-too-chilly basement; it never gets below fifty. After the leaves die back, she covers the plants with a paper bag, so light can’t come from the basement windows. She gradually starts to wake them up when the twelve weeks are up, adding some infrequent water, and brings them up into the sun on a staggered schedule.

The bulbs should not be repotted, just given a bit of additional soil if needed. These plants truly love being crowded in their pots.

Abbott has labels for all her amaryllis, which go well beyond the usual red or red-and-white-striped ones we see every year in the big box stores. She has huge doubles like Elvas and Nymph, spidery cybisters like Le Paz, pale varieties like the much-sought-after Lemon Lime, and her current favorite, the enormous Orange Sovereign. One of the secrets of her success must be the absolutely pristine conditions of both her basement storage room and the window-lined sunroom where the active plants are kept. All the pots are plain terracotta, allowing the flamboyant blooms to take the spotlight.

But what if you don’t plan to keep anything close to sixty-seven plants going, and you don’t care about the fancy hybrids? What if you’d like to have just one or two common types to enjoy each winter? There is hope. I have four red amaryllis that rebloom for me every year. I keep them as houseplants and give them a nice vacation outside each summer. I bring them inside in October and leave them near the window, watering infrequently. Sure enough, starting in late February, they give me two blooming stalks each. If I were to give them a dormant period, I might be able to get the blooms earlier, but I find their long strappy stalks to be cheerful and attractive throughout the year inside, so I don’t bother with the whole basement routine. It works for me—maybe it would work for you.

Otherwise, follow Lacy Abbott’s rules above, and give amaryllis another shot. Their beauty is well worth it.

Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree and a garden writer who writes for Horticulture magazine and blogs at gardenrant.com and gardeningwhileintoxicated.com.