Want a flax (Phormium) but can’t find the room for one of the big ones? Then the miniature variety ‘Surfer’, which seldom grows higher than 30 centimetres, is the one for you. The narrow, slightly twisting (just like a good surfing wave) foliage is green with narrow brown stripes, developing red and yellow tints as it ages. This colouring makes it good for mixing with grasses, such as the small, native, blue foliaged Festuca coxii, and with blue and bronze succulents, or the little jelly beans succulents with tiny, fleshy, red, yellow or green leaves. It also works well grown at the base of the tall stemmed, reddish-black foliaged Aeonium ‘Schwartzkopf’ or as a bulky groundcover in between big aloes and colourful cabbage trees (Cordylines) such as ‘Red Star’.
This is the sort of scene that is charming in a beach garden, where formality goes out the window and a natural beachscape scene takes over. In such a garden Phormium ‘Surfer’ looks very much at home among twisted pieces of driftwood, or sculptures made from pumice pieces skewered by a piece of steel rod.
Try mixing it too with ground covering Coprosmas, which are tough and drought tolerant, or for something a bit more dramatic plant a little group behind a hummock of moss-like, shiny green Scleranthus biflorus or position it near dark shiny black, grass-like, Ophiopogon ‘Black Dragon’.
In gardens with better soil, make use of Phormium ‘Surfer’ as a contrast to perennials such as mini daylilies in shades of gold, red and orange, and try it among bronze foliage such as Heucheras and the little native grass Uncina ‘Egmont Red’ and as a foreground to dark foliage plants such as Canna ‘America’ and Ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’.
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Schemes & Themes
using Liddle Wonder Plants