10 ★ FT Weekend 4 April/5 April 2020House Home
Variations on the wild primrose may
seem unnecessary extras, such is its
own natural beauty. However, I have
learnt how others are of unmissable
beauty too. All the primulas in the
Garryarde series are excellent and very
easy, mostly in fine shades of pink.
Even in a few supermarkets a fine
cream-coloured one, Primula Devon
Cream, is on offer or available on line.
Years ago, a reader kindly initiated
me into one widely known as the
Quaker’s Bonnet, sending me a plant
in a small metal canister. I still have it
and its many children. Its approved
name is now Primula vulgaris Lilacina
Plena and up to 12 suppliers list it in
that essential book during shutdown,
theRHS Plant Finder. Several of these
supply by post. This double lilac-pink
primrose is easy and a joy in spring.
Apart from magnolias, my stars of
the moment are two bushes of what
has become marketed as the “pearl
bush”. It will be correctly listed as
Exochorda in the shrub sections of big
garden centres, but much the best is
one called serratifolia Snow White.
Its single white flowers are much bigger
than those on The Bride, the more
readily available variety.
Exochordas are a great choice for
newly cleared circles in rough grass.
They will transplant well now and grow
up to 7ft high, but hard pruning after
flowering will contain them to a lower
height. Imagine one in your mind’s-eye
garden, set among blue-and-white
flowering bulbs at ground level, the
scillas and chionodoxas that are loving
the early season.
Even in your mind’s eye, remember
what underpins the English gardens we
admire: the thousands of nurseries, big
and small, that put as many as 75,000
varieties of plants on sale for us.
Suppliers of young plants to big garden
centres are being catastrophically hit,
being stuck seasonally with millions of
living stock and nowhere to send it in
the chain. Could not social distancing
and restricted entry be allowed in
garden centres just as in supermarkets?
Gardening is one of lockdown’s
essentials for mind and body.
Meanwhile some smaller nurseries
are supplying by post so long as family
members can cope with demand.
Even if you have to imagine a garden,
remember that without orders,
nurseries will be casualties. Order for
others or spend the cost of at least two
former dinners in a restaurant on
excellent plants for yourselves.N
ever have gardens been
more appreciated. Those
lucky enough to have
one can step into an
independent world that
moves by its own rhythms. In previous
years I have worried that my spring
plants may become infected, that leaf
scale may develop on camellias or
blight on box hedging. This year the
concerns are reversed. We are deeply
worried about our own and our fellow
humans’ health. Plants’ rhythms
meanwhile have been accelerated
but not sickened.
The botanical start to the shutdown
has been spectacular. Sunshine has
brought out some heartening beauty
before its time. Tulips for May
flowering are already fully open.
So are hyacinths, three weeks before
their usual flowering time. Mid- and
later-season cherry blossom has been
intermingled with early narcissi and
hellebores, both of which are still
flowering well. Starry anemones prove
yet again they are squirrel-proof little
corms and utterly lovely in flower.
Last year, the early sunshine was so
hot that many April flowers went over
within five days. This year, the spring
sunshine has been even earlier but has
been tempered by a chill in the wind.
Camellias are flowering wonderfully
and magnolias continue at their best,
with rhododendrons now to join them.
It is all so lovely, but...
As I step out into it, I think of an
unnamed ancient Greek poet and his
lament in verse for his fellow poetBion’s death. In c120BC he reflected on
the mallows and other garden plants,
how they flourish and die down but
then return for another year. We
“mighty and wise men”, he continued,
“sleep a sleep which knows no end
nor waking, also in the hollow earth”.
I reflect on his words when I look at the
new flowering in this springtime of dire
human fears. However, I then reflect
that we can use our gardens to extend
and enhance this once-and-only life.
Many of you do not happen to have
a garden in which you can work, do
good and take pleasure. If so, I will give
you a garden of the mind. Another
ancient Greek once referred to thought
as a walk for the soul. In the coming
weeks, I will recall to your mind’s eye
gardens in which you can take your
thoughts for a healthy outing. So
put your mind on a lead and join me in
a thought-walk.
It begins with bushes of two superb
items for cutting, neither of which
was widely available in florists before
the shutdown. Bushes of ribes, the
flowering currant, have been in top
form. Recently I doubled up on the
new white-flowered varieties and
I recommend them very highly.
Elkington’s White is even better than
the more readily available White Icicle,
but I have them both and admire them
greatly. They are flowering on the edge
of a mass of hellebores under trees,
broken up by my favourite double pink
cherry tree, Prunus Accolade.
If you cut branches of a ribes with
the colour showing in its buds they willburst into flower indoors. If yours are
now going over, take several cuttings
off their side shoots and put them into
an open, well draining compost in
open ground and keep them watered.
They will root amazingly easily, even
giving off roots from cut stems
kept in vases of frequently changed
water. In autumn they will have
become established plants ready for
thickening a semi-shaded area or a
front garden’s boundaries.
I like the currant scent of the leaves.
I most like the ease with which they
can be pruned, a job to be done in a
week or two’s time after flowering.
An early cut will restore any shape
that is straggling. This pruning is an
excellent shutdown job, one that will
bring rewards when life re-emerges.
The same clipping after flowering
is needed now by forsythias. About
seven years ago, I assembled a varied
range of these yellow-flowered spring
shrubs, planning in my own mind’s eye
a glowing little cluster in a far part of
the garden. It has now clustered and
started glowing. The bigger flowers on
the less usual Arnold Giant are my
favourites but the more usual Golden
Nugget or small-flowered Minigold are
not far behind.Garden of the
mind’s eye
In this springtime of spectacular flowerings and
human fears, we can use plants, whether real
or in the imagination, to enhance our lives
The branches of forsythia also make
superb cut flowers indoors. As soon as
the flowers fade, cut back the flowered
shoots to encourage new growth this
year on which next year’s spring flowers
will appear. Most of Britain’s forsythia is
cut too late or not at all and flowers less
well as a result. Again, this job is a good
one for the closed-down interlude.
At ground level, the primrose season
has been superb. They loved the wet
mild winter and have proven their
ability to self-seed in open soil.(Above) Daffodils and tulips at
Hergest Croft Gardens, Kington,
Herefordshire; (right) forsythia
Golden Nugget— GAP Photos/Carole Drake; GAP
Photos/Nova Photo GraphikRobin Lane Fox
Ongardens
APRIL 4 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 1/4/2020 - 17: 24 User: rosalind.sykes Page Name: RES10, Part,Page,Edition: RES, 10, 1