June 1st 2005 - Tulips
With all the rain and warmth the garden is romping away just now. After the big change round we had over the winter and spring, moving plants into better positions or more attractive combinations, I’m optimistic that the garden will look better this year, more ‘unified’ (that's my word of the moment, 'unified').
"Soon they will be joined by the red-orange flowers of Potentilla ‘Miss Wilmot’'..."
I’m pleased with the extra brightness that we have from plants with colourful foliage. Purple leaved Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’, the newly planted gold and green striped Libertia peregrinans, red and green Photinia x fraseri 'Red Robin' to name but a few, and that’s without mentioning the Heucheras. The grasses are filling out well and are wafting elegantly in the wind. Soon they will be joined by the red-orange flowers of Potentilla ‘Miss Wilmot’ which should look pretty trailing about amongst the green grasses. A red flowered lupin is about to bloom close to the Cotinus and I’m looking forward to seeing the combination of colours. I feel that this will be a good year in the garden.
Now that the weather has warmed up, it seemed a good time to add some watercress (Nasturtium officinale) to the pond. It grows quickly and has masses of tiny white flowers in late spring and early summer. It will provide shade for the water creatures and help prevent the build up of algae. Rather than buying it by the bunch from an aquatic shop, I bought a cheap bag of mixed salad from the supermarket and picked out the best bits of cress. The stems went into a plastic tub of water which was put on the kitchen windowsill and within two weeks all the stems had long strings of roots and were ready to go outside. You don’t even need to put them in pots but can just lodge them under stones, where they will be quite happy. It prefers growing in shallow water but can also be found in marshy soils. I don’t much like watercress to eat but it does look good growing around the water’s edge. Since it went in, I’ve watched a red damselfly laying eggs under one of the leaves.
"Do you ever have moments where you suddenly see something out of context and it completely changes the way you feel about it?"
Do you ever have moments where you suddenly see something out of context and it completely changes the way you feel about it? I was out walking with Toby the dog the other day and had one of these moments. There are some set-aside fields down the road and we go there once or twice a day depending on where His Lordship decides to go. We let Toby choose whether to go to the woods or fields, it’s his walk after all and he does seem quite particular about his choices, except for the occasions when he can’t decide and dithers on the corner.
Toby the dog
It’s a pleasant place, ‘over the fields’, bordered by hedgerows and woodland, full of birds, bees, butterflies and wildflowers. Paths have been trodden around the edges and also wind across the middle. In the summer the paths are kept open by being mowed, creating an attractive serpentine lane through the longer growth. I rather like the paths that humans make, the way they wind. There are a number of different grasses growing there with many textures and colours. My favourites have pink and purple blooms, which stand out in patches here and there. On breezy days the grasses all billow and wave and shine in the sun, and in summer they are covered with the gleaming gossamer threads of thousands upon thousands of spiders. Above the tree line, you can see a wold in the distance and it changes colour very often, depending on what’s growing on the slopes. At the moment it’s a mixture of green and bright yellow and, if the sky is clear, and you stand in the right place and squint a bit, you can see three ash trees standing close together at the very top.
"My eye was captured by a spot of bright pink in an overgrown corner"
On the way to the fields, you walk down a rough track. Along one side of it is a hedge of wild damson which has recently been laid by students from the local agricultural college. Very fine it looks too, thick of leaf and filled with the songs of small birds. Behind the hedge is a field, where the same students practice their ploughing, and you can see into it through a gap at one end.
It was as I walked past the gap and glanced into the field that my eye was captured by a spot of bright pink in an overgrown corner. It wasn’t there before so I stopped to see what it might be. Above the grasses and nettles rose the most beautiful tulip in the world. A slender, curving, green stem was topped by an elegant vase-shaped bloom in a rich dark pink. All alone against the dark green-blue background, it was unexpected and all the lovelier for it. I stood still and gazed for a while, enchanted, before going home for the camera so it could be immortalised, though no photo can do justice to the actual sight. The closest I’ve come to a name is the lily-flowered tulip ‘Mariette’.
The tulip
I’d never been keen on tulips before, having associated them with the Dutch type, those rather vulgar, blousy, things which come in red or yellow. I’ve ignored them so hard over the years, that it’s only recently that other types have brought themselves to my attention, such as this elegant lily-flowered tulip with its tapered petals which curve out at the top. To see it growing in that wild state was wonderful, but what would it look like in the garden? It might look well planted to grow through ferns but I was so very taken with the sight of it rising above the grass. I wonder if it would work here in the grass bed? Carefully planted so that it looks natural, it could be glorious.
A few days later
© Copyright Miranda Hodgson 2005