Alone
in this garden, therefore, during what I consider the most magnificent spring I
can remember, I’ve been astonished anew by the succession of returning flowers,
less for their contribution to a wider planting scheme than for their
stand-alone beauty. For example, I’ve stopped more often beside the violet
campanulas that clamber over the Museum’s sun-baked stone; stood looking up
into the hanging jasmine and the pendulous maroon flowers of Akebia vine. I’ve
waited impatiently, too, for the unveiling of thousands of tiny blooms that
make up our giant, exotic echium. Individuality of colour, form, scent —
tenacity, even — are all qualities that this year, because of the slower pace,
have caught and held my attention. And that goes for the flowers spilling out
from neighbours’ front gardens also, or those of the weeds creeping back into
our quieter city streets — I’ve never seen so much fumewort, nor alkanet so
vigorous.
So much floral exhibition took me back to
another wonderful essay, by the late plantsman (and former gardens adviser to
the National Trust) Graham Stuart Thomas, titled ‘The Beauty of Flowers’.
Written a century on from Jefferies, and again composed towards the end of the
author’s life, it is an appeal made for the unadulterated flower: the wilder
forms, as they are found in nature, rather than those over-cultivated by ‘the
hands of the hybridist’. Thomas argues that the beauty of flowers is the
fundamental stimulus for gardening; the reason we garden. ‘And it all started
by somebody singling out a flower from the wild and transferring it to a patch
near his dwelling’. This innate attraction is set against a history of
overbreeding: a ‘greediness’, he suggests, that has since led nurserymen to
frill the iris, flatten the snapdragon and de-spur the pretty wild aquilegia in
flawed pursuit of ever more extravagant blooms. It is an astonishing essay, and
a powerful advocation for growing as wide a diversity of flowers in our gardens
as possible — each for its own beauty — and, in doing so, conserve vulnerable
species by keeping them in cultivation. Put more simply: grow what naturally
appeals, for the appeal is natural.
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