This plant prefers to grow in full sun but will tolerate light shade at the expense of heavy flowering. It requires average irrigation in late spring and summer. The foliage is cold hardy to about 25° F. and root hardy below 15° F.

The name Agapanthus is derived from the Greek words 'agapé', meaning "love" or "friendship" and 'anthos', meaning "flower" and it is for this reason that "Love Flower" is sometimes given as its common name, though there does not seem to be any colloquial usage of this name and the reason for naming as such remains unclear. Some have suggested that the translation could be interpreted as "lovely flower", "flower of love" or if the name originated from the word 'Agapeo' which means "to be contented with" it could just refer to a flower Charles Louis L'Héritier, who first used the name Agapanthus. A good accounting of this is presented by Wim Snoeijer in his Agapanthus: A Revision of the Genus Timber Press 2004 but essentially Carl Linnaeus (the father of modern taxonomy) in 1753 published the name Crinum africanum for a plant likely brought back to Holland from the Cape of Good Hope by the year 1679. In 1789 Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle, the Director of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, changed the name of this plant to Agapanthus but used the invalid specific epithet umbellatus instead of preserving Linnaeus species name africanus. This mistake has perpetuated naming problems within the genus ever since. In addition, the common "Lily of the Nile" is often used for this plant even though this plant originated in South Africa and not along the Nile River.

Agapanthus 'Grey Ghost' is a plant that was found in 1983 in a block of seed grown Agapanthus 'Peter Pan' at Persson's Nursery in Pasadena by Blair Haynes of Shinglehouse Nursery & Design in Coos Bay. In a large block of plants he noted it was the only one with creamy white foliage. While this foliage color is quite evident on plants growing at our location, Blair has since noted that it does not hold onto it in his cool coastal Oregon location but that it flowers heavier than most other plants called 'Peter Pan' and is also a white flowering form. As noted on our Agapanthus 'Peter Pan' webpage, there was once a single named dwarf blue flowering Agapanthus selection made by Jimmy Giridlian at his Oakhurst Gardens in 1949 called 'Peter Pan', but many nurseries wanting to more rapidly increase their stock began growing 'Peter Pan' from seed which resulted in many varieties of Agapanthus being sold as 'Peter Pan', but none so unique as this one.

We thank Blair Haynes from providing us with our initial stock of this very nice plant in 2019 and we love the name as we have introduced other plants with similarly colored foliage that we have named "Gray Ghost" (but using the American English language spelling of "gray" with an "a" instead of an "e") such as Dietes 'Gray Ghost' and Agave striata 'Gray Ghost". 

Information displayed on this page about Agapanthus 'Grey Ghost' is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.