Platts Black Flax Lily Plants

Phormium tenax 'Platts Black' Flax Lily Plants. 3 Litre Pots

The chic, grey-purple leaves make this the ideal plant for an exotic and sophisticated planting scheme with its upright architectural stature.

Marvellously chic and popular phormium with an exotically stacked rosette of extremely dark green, glossy leaves that appear almost black to silver, with touches of purple. Occasionally, they will produce a tall and spectacular flower stalk. To 1.2m tall.

Browse our other Phormium varieties or all our perennial plants.

Features

• Almost black leaves.
• Flowers irregularly. Blood red, around July
• Grows on the coast
• Hardiness rating H4
• Height x Spread: 1m x 1m

Growing 'Platts Black' 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

It would look striking paired with dahlias with dark leaves such as David Howard (vivid orange flowers), the Bishop of Canterbury (cerise flowers) or Happy Single Kiss (apricot-peach flowers). Echinacea would work well too as would a variety of grasses of differing heights to create a prairie garden effect. To follow the exotic black, contemporary theme, you could also partner with black bamboo and for spring, rows of Black Parrot tulips. To contrast the colour add in Phormium Evening Glow and pair with Heuchera Forever Purple and Lime Marmalade.