ABOUT 10 years ago, someone casually handed me a rather fat bulb that almost filled the small pot.
It was unlabelled.
Only the bottom half of the bulb was in the bone-dry potting soil. The rest was sticking up, completely exposed to the weather.
It looked vaguely familiar, a bit like a belladonna lily bulb.
Anyway, I planted the thing halfway up a rather dry bank, leaving just the tip showing.
In late autumn, it suddenly started to come into leaf - great, broad, strap-shaped, blue-grey leaves and during the following winter and spring the bulb not only started to thrust itself from the ground, it started to put on weight.
I could only guess that this by now coconut-sized bulb belonged to some member of the amaryllis tribe.
After dying back in mid-spring, the bulb went into a kind of dry rest as leaves yellowed and fell off.
All summer long and completely without any water, the bulb remained sitting there, barren, leafless and seemingly dead.
Then again in autumn, those huge, flat leaves emerged and once again the bulb swelled, this time so much that by the end of spring it was the size of a football.
Realisation now dawned that an absolute treasure was growing in our garden.
My guess as to what it was proved accurate the following March, when a thick, powerful shoot started to emerge from the tip of the huge bulb and rapidly grew almost a metre.
The top of the massive shoot started to separate, then gradually opened and spread widely, like the spokes of a wheel.
A week later, the tips of every spoke - there were about 30 - produced a single, tubular, dull-scarlet flower to display a circle of small trumpets.
It was an extraordinary sight and most friends who visited were fascinated and intrigued by the remarkable display.
Some of you will have already recognised this plant as Josephine lily (Brunsvigia josephae).
These astonishing, drought-loving plants can be grown from seed, but it can take up to 20 years before bulbs can grow large enough to produce the great candelabra-like flower stem.
However, once flowering begins, the bulb will flower every year.
Last year, something strange happened with our plant.
Instead of a flower spike, up to 10 separate leaf-clusters emerged.
The giant bulb had magically become at least 10 individual, smaller bulbs.
We are all watching this new development with growing excitement because at least 10 flower shoots have appeared and are already reaching for the sky.
I'll wait until early summer next year when the bulbs retreat into their summer rest.
Then the lot will be carefully lifted, if possible, without breaking too many of the thick, fleshy roots.
Every new bulb will be gently disentangled and immediately replanted along this otherwise boring, dry bank.
I expect to have an annual hedge of Josephine lilies blooming happily away within a couple of years.
That should really stop the traffic.
