The story of how it came to Guernsey and its subsequent fame, though, is a tale shrouded in mystery and controversy. Primary sources relate that it began flourishing there around 1655 when a survivor of a shipwreck gave some bulbs to the Jurat, John de Sausmarez, as a thank-you gift for his hospitality. His descendants support this version today. No records exist, however, of any vessel lost through shipwreck on that shore in the Dutch East India Company annals, so one has to assume that, if true, the ship was salvaged, refloated and completed its journey.

However, the Diamond Lily was also known to have flourished in the Wimbledon garden of the Cromwellian General John Lambert, a keen horticulturalist, and he is known to have acquired bulbs in the early 1650s from Morin's nursery in Paris. 'Honest' John was exiled to Guernsey after the Restoration in 1660, so it is altogether possible that he took his beloved bulb collection with him. The supposition is that the story of the shipwreck was made up to conceal the true origins of the bulbs by jealous Royalists, for whom Lambert was a bogeyman. He was re-imprisoned in much less salubrious circumstances elsewhere. With his plants presumably remaining on the island many would have good cause to hide their origins. This thesis is, of course, strongly denied by the descendants of the Jurat.

Whichever tale is true, the original bulbs multiplied and soon they were growing in profusion throughout the sand dunes. By 1725 these plants were known as Lilium Sarniense, named after 'Sarnia'- the Roman's name for Guernsey. Such was the perceived beauty of the flowers that Dr. James Douglas, the pre-eminent botanical writer of the time, gave them the accolade “the greatest Empress of the Flowery World”.

By 1820 the genus, which currently comprises over 30 species, was recognised to be different to true lilies, receiving their modern name nerine from William Herbert (1778-1847), a son of the Earl of Carnarvon. He was in his day the premier expert on Amaryllids, the plant group to which nerines are actually members. He evidently subscribed to the shipwreck story because “Nerine” was a sea nymph from Greek mythology - otherwise nerines have nothing whatsoever to do with the sea. In the wild, Nerine sarniensis produces flowers of many hues, ranging from orange, crimson, scarlet, pink and white, though never yellow. It was he, too, who started hybridising N. sarniensis, N. undulata and N. humilis, and by 1837 there were seven recognised hybrids.

The breakthrough in breeding these plants came towards the end of the nineteenth century with the work of H. J. Elwes who found that through judicious breeding with other nerine species a much greater variety of colour was available. The distinguished bulb merchants Barr & Sons also raised many new hybrids, as did the Norris family at Welland and the Stephenson-Clarkes at Borde Hill.

Exbury entered the nerine story in the 1920's and '30s when Lionel de Rothschild, creator of Exbury Gardens, acquired many Elwes and Borde Hill hybrids and it was here that the first tetraploid nerine 'Inchmery Kate', was created. Tetraploids have an extra set of chromosomes that make them larger and bolder, though with the drawback of infertility. The Exbury Nerines continued to grow here until the 1970s when they were sold off. Colours now ranged from the original orange through red to white and bluish-mauve. In the 1960's Stanley Smee made great strides forward with other new tetraploid strains and the nerine hybridisation tradition continues today with new breeders such as Ken Hall on the Isle of Wight.

Sir Peter Smithers, who had seen nerines at Exbury in Lionel's day, acquired part of this collection. He had started breeding nerines when he was MP for Winchester in the 1960s with a brief interregnum while he was Secretary-General of the EU in Strasbourg. He took up the challenge again when he moved to Vico Morcote in Switzerland where he built a new house and garden overlooking Lake Lugano. He then took the opportunity to augment his nascent breeding programme with the Exbury Nerines and set about improving what had gone before.

This he did most spectacularly. His selection process was rigorous, all new seedlings had to undergo the 'Beauty Contest' which was held each autumn on the balcony of his house. His friends were invited to form a jury and were asked to forget about any consideration other than beauty as they saw it. Each new flower was compared to its parents and to the others in its colourway. Marks were given and the top plants went on to survive in the collection for another year. Sir Peter evaluated his crosses, giving marks out of five for each of the following points: colour, form and size of florets, shape and size of the flower head and length and strength of the stem.