Froth

I love a bit of froth. Cappuccino, proper beer, a steaming bath with a cloud of bubbles on top, chocolate Aero, confetti (sadly banned at most weddings now - see below), fireworks, Thalictrum aquilegiifolium…

May is the frothiest of months. Cow parsley foams around the knees of the flowering hawthorn - and what a spectacular spring it has been for hawthorn blossom. My guess is that those two cold spells in December and January triggered a rush of bud formation. Whatever the reason, it’s a joy to behold and hopefully portends a bumper haw crop for the birds. These pinkish trees along old hedgerows are descendents of our ancient hawthorn lineage, I’m told. This one is in the field opposite the house, and a joy to behold.

Many umbellifers, like the cow parsley, are biennial. They grow from seed in the first year, producing leaves and a long tap root. It’s the energy from this tap root that powers the early flowering stems in the second year. It’s a great strategy for attracting early pollinators, giving enough time to set fresh seed before winter sets in. Carrots and parsnips are biennials and produce beautiful flat flowerheads if you don’t get round to harvesting them.

Perennials are my thing though and one of the best is in flower now - a gorgeously elegant plant weighed down by its hefty name, Chaerophyllum hirsuitum ‘Roseum’. It’s a true perennial, slowly creating a mat of ferny, aromatic leaves. The flowerheads stand around 2ft high so its perfect for edging partly shaded borders.

It’s only real weakness - for me - is that it’s not easy to get the seeds to germinate so I only ever have twenty or so plants each year from division. A couple of regular, sharp-elbowed customers snap them all up as soon as they are ready and that’s it for the year.

I’ll come back to the subject of umbellifers later in the year as there are some real beauties which flower a bit later.

Although not an umbellifer - it’s actually in the buttercup family - the frothiest plant in flower at the moment is Thalictrum aquilegiifolium. Yes, the leaves look just like aquilegia foliage, hence the name. A lovely purplish one has self-seeded right next to the nursery bench where we display the same plants for sale. Customers often take some convincing that the 6 inch high young plant in a small pot will flower shoulder-high in a couple of years.

Speaking of froth, we were at Chelsea Flower Show on press day last week - yes, lucky me :-). In fact this year there was a notable absence of ostentatious frivolity - no Swarovski encrusted gorillas for instance. The overall standard of the the gardens seemed exceptionally high, but not because of obvious lavish spending, more the thought, the clear sense of purpose and heart that had gone into so many of them.

We were hugely fortunate to be invited onto two of the gardens including ‘Transcendence’ by McWilliam Studios. I loved the contrasting shapes of the planting and if you’re wondering what the cantilevered ‘roof’ was all about, here’s the view through it from the ground. Thanks for showing us around, Andrew Wilson - we felt the care and love that went into creating it.

All the talk was about Sarah Price’s beautifully artistic garden celebrating Cedric Morris’s irises. The colouring in the hard landscaping and the planting was sublime and I was totally captivated by the shadow play of tree branches on the warm-toned gravels.

But for me, the Harris Bugg garden, built for the ‘Horatio’s Garden’ charity and designed for people with spinal injuries nailed it from the first glance. Show gardens are often planted unrealistically, with spacing and combinations that could never work for more than one season. This garden had everything - gorgeous and realistic planting, a beautiful, serene building and perfect ergonomics for its purpose. It was heartening to see so many people in wheelchairs enjoying Chelsea - more than I have ever seen before. We got chatting to a man who introduced himself as a spinal surgeon who enthused about the innovative flat, firm, porous pathways. It was only as we walked away that Steve whispered ‘Did you see his name? That was Horatio’s dad…’.

Later we were shown round the Samaritan’s ‘Listening Garden’ by a very elegant lady who sat us down under the trees at the far end, explaining how sitting next to someone can often easier make it easier for people to share thoughts than sitting face to face. She stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to sit and enjoy this spot,’ she said, ‘by the way, I’m especially proud of this garden. My dad started the Samaritans 70 years ago..’ We both stood and shook her hand. We had met Horatio’s father and Chad Varah’s daughter in the space of an hour. These are the two encounters I will remember. There were other ‘celebrities’ at Chelsea too, of course. Kate Middleton walked crisply past us, tight-lipped, eyes front, towards a carefully stage-managed picnic. Ahead of her a huge wall of press cameras were lined up, menacingly I thought, like a four tier firing squad. I just felt desperately sorry for her.

Where were we? Ah yes, froth. Let’s wrap up with a little cheer.

We know the world is racked with serious problems, most of which are way outside our control. Apart from trying not make things worse, the next best thing we can do is take as much pleasure from life as much as we can and to spread a little joy around too.

We took some time out of our Chelsea Flower Show trip to drop into the Chelsea Physic Garden next door. On the way we passed a registry office - the steps outside adorned with little pink, blue and white tissue paper hearts, no doubt quite against the rules. Which reminded me - this is me, aged four at my Uncle Tony and Auntie Sheila’s wedding, in 1966. Someone had thrown confetti and I couldn’t stop laughing, apparently, making everyone around me laugh too. That’s my Nanna on the left in the pink hat, laughing in the face of her own very real difficulties, of which more, perhaps another time.

Laughter, whether for sheer joy, or in the face of adversity is the often finest thing you can do.