Salpiglossis was one of Vita’s favourite summer-flowering annuals for growing under cover, out of the rain. That’s when it looks at its best – velvety and pristine.
‘The salpiglossis arrived in this country from Chile as long ago as 1820 and is one of those flowers which has benefited incredibly from the attentions of horticulturists to the original form …
‘It is entirely lovely. To my mind it far exceeds its relation the petunia in every way. The range and richness of its colour is amazing. Like the Assyrian, it can come up in cohorts of purple and gold, or in ruby and gold, or in white and gold, when it has the milky purity, gold-embroidered, traditionally associated with the robes of saints and angels. Then you can also grow it in brown and gold, a very rare colour in flowers, for it is a true brown – the brown of corduroy, with all the depth of the velvet pile. The veining is drawn as though by the stroke of a fine brush; and, moreover, suggests what is in fact the truth: that the salpiglossis shows to great advantage as a cut flower.
‘Out in the garden it is apt to look bedraggled rather too easily, for unless it has been carefully staked its brittle stems suffer badly from wind or heavy rain, but in a vase its intense livery glows unsullied. Place it for choice in a window or on a table where the sun will strike it, and then ask yourself whether it has not proved itself worthy of all the care it entailed.
‘For the same reason, try growing it as pot-plant for the winter months. It adapts itself very graciously to this treatment. Of course you must keep it warm; forty to fifty degrees should be a safe temperature. In fact, you might try rescuing half a dozen plants from the garden in the autumn before the frosts come, potting them, and seeing whether they would not carry on, getting even sturdier as they grew older. Experiments are always interesting, but if you prefer the safer course, sow a few seeds in pots in March and grow them on in what gardeners descriptively call a gentle heat.’
Salpiglossis has made the odd appearance in the Sissinghurst borders in the last few years, and it would make an excellent reintroduction if Vita’s cold greenhouse were restored. It could join a good collection of plants she loved, better suited for inside than out.
She liked to grow a few ‘joke’ plants, things she could wheel out when she wanted to amuse. Her favourite was the ‘humble plant’, Mimosa pudica. Adam remembers having a pot of this in the middle of the dining-room table when he was a child. Harold would encourage him to touch it, then instantly that part of the plant (just that branch) would collapse, as if you’d killed it. It would then perk up so you could do it again and again, to great hilarity all round.
‘Amongst other seeds for spring sowing,’ Vita tells us, ‘I ordered a sixpenny packet of Mimosa pudica, the Humble Plant. Most people, including some nurserymen, call it the Sensitive Plant, a name that should be reserved for Mimosa sensitiva, which contradictorily, is less sensitive than M. pudica. So humble is the Humble Plant, so bashful, that a mere touch of the finger or a puff of breath blown across it will cause it to collapse instantly into a woebegone heap … One grows it purely for the purpose of amusing the children. The normal child, if not an insufferable prig, thoroughly enjoys being unkind to something; so here is a harmless outlet for this instinct in the human young. Shrieks of delight are evoked, enhanced by the sadistic pleasure of doing it over and over again. “Let’s go back and see if it has sat up yet.” It probably has, for it seems to be endowed with endless patience under such mischievous persecution.
‘I must admit that I would like to see it in its native home in tropical America, where, I have been told, acres of pigmy forest swoon under the touch of a ruffling breeze. Nominally a perennial there, it is best treated as a half-hardy annual here. This means that we must sow our sixpenny packet in a pot or a pan under glass or on the window-sill of a warm room. By late summer it will have grown up into quite a tall plant about a foot high; and then you may observe that, like most sensitive people, it is not only sensitive but prickly. It develops large spiky thorns, but still retains its shivering fright. It then becomes not only an amusement for children but a symbol for many of our friends.’
I have found it slow to grow sown in April, so this is a half-hardy for early sowing in January or February, or even October or November with a bit of heat – and it must be kept frost-free as it grows on through spring.
Vita goes on: ‘If these joke plants interest you I have several more in mind. For instance, the Burning Bush, Dictamnus fraxinella or Dittany, which you can set alight into a blue flame, especially on a warm summer day, without any harm to the plant. The explanation of this apparent miracle is the presence of a volatile oil; but why seek for explanations when you can so easily entertain your young guests?’
AUTUMN
As autumn continues, garden abundance peters out again and it’s good to revert to some spectacular pot-grown things. Vita built up a good number, including the Scarborough lily, crinums and belladonna lilies, growing them in pots which could be moved around and used in key places when they came into flower. Feeling the lack of colour, she could stroll out to her greenhouse at almost any moment and pick up a pot of something interesting to bring inside to have with her for the next few weeks.
Scarborough lily – Cyrtanthus elatus
One of the most beautiful of early-autumn flowering bulbs is surely the Scarborough lily,’ she says. ‘That is its everyday name, but botanically it is known as Vallota purpurea or Vallota speciosa [now called Cyrtanthus elatus]. Like the Belladonna lily, it belongs to the family of the Amaryllidaceae, and comes from South Africa, not from Scarborough. Usually regarded as a pot plant for the cool greenhouse, there has long been some dispute as to its hardiness … If you want to grow it out of doors you should give it the warmest possible place, say at the foot of a south wall, and plant it fairly deep, say 6 in., with a generous allowance of sand, and a covering of bracken or pine branches in winter. Like the Belladonna lily, it appreciates water when the leaves begin to appear but should be kept on the dry side during its resting period, from November to March or April, advice which is more easily followed when the bulbs are grown in pots under glass. Grown out of doors, a cloche or handlight might be the solution.
‘Kept in pots it gives little trouble, as it does not need constant repotting, but seems rather to enjoy becoming cramped in a pot that you might imagine too small for so large a bulb.
‘The colour is variously described as scarlet or bright scarlet, a description I find most misleading, almost as misleading as the botanical adjective purpurea. Scarlet may be the official term on the R.H.S. colour chart, but to my mind it suggests a Guardsman’s tunic or the zonal pelargonium so aptly named Grenadier. The Scarborough lily has far more orange in it. Allowing for the difference in texture between a hard substance and the soft translucent petal of a flower, it exactly resembles coral. I have held them side by side to compare, and if only a stray bloom of the chaenomeles Knaphill Scarlet would make its appearance at this time of year, as sometimes happens, I fancy that I should find very little difference in colour. But there again, this variety of chaenomeles is dubbed scarlet, so evidently I am at variance with the authorities, and, unrepentant, shall remain so.’
The other thing Vita recommends using a cold greenhouse for – if you can remember – is sowing some hardy annuals in early autumn to flower inside for Christmas or early in the New Year. I sow schizanthus, the butterfly plant, in early August for flowering in the greenhouse the next spring, but it’s worth experimenting with the following annuals, which might flower even earlier. As Vita says:
‘People with the advantage of even a tiny greenhouse may have a great deal of fun with a few pots of half-hardy annuals sown in August. They bring a summer look into winter. What could be more summer-like than a pot crammed with nemesia, either in separate colours or in that gay mixture we so often see bordering a cottage-garden path? Nemesia will give this reward by Christmas or New Year’s Day. Ten-week stocks are well known as a winter pot-plant. People who are successful wit
h mignonette in the open can grow this delightful, old-fashioned, sentimental, sweet-scented friend, which always looks to me like a miniature forest of spires of dust-devils. It needs a firm soil, and some lime, and sometimes will elude the skill of the most experienced gardener, though it will often flourish in the little plot of the most inexperienced child. It seems to be one of those inexplicably tricky things with minds and prejudices of their own.
‘I am assured on good authority that the beautiful Morning Glory, Heavenly Blue, if sown now, will produce its wealth of blue trumpets indoors in mid-winter. Trained up some tall bamboo sticks, twiddling in and out, with its delicate tendrils and its pale, heart-shaped leaves and its amazing azure flowers, it would indeed offer a wonderful summer-sky reminder on a January day.’
CHRISTMAS
As well as the usual ‘Paper White’ narcissus and Roman hyacinths, Vita offers us the excellent idea of forcing garden lilies-of-the-valley for Christmas, in a pot, to bring inside. This calls for a bit of heat but is easy to do. If you have a good spread of this plant – as you often do in the shady part of an old garden – it’s worth the sacrifice of a small clump, whose hole will be filled rapidly with the romping roots of this tuberous perennial.
‘A temptation and a suggestion reach me, hand in hand, in the shape of a leaflet about retarded crowns of lily of the valley. If this leaflet did not come from one of the most reliable and reputable of our nurserymen I should mistrust it, for it sounds too good to be true. As it is, I accept their word that I can have lilies of the valley in flower within three to four weeks of planting, at any time of the year, including just now when they would come in appropriately for Christmas. It is a real extravagance, because the crowns will just have to be thrown away; it would be no good planting them out as one plants out the bulbs of narcissus and hyacinths, which have been forced.
‘All that you do is to order [or dig up] and plant them … They do not like to be left lying about, waiting. You can plant them either in a frame, provided that you can keep the night temperature up to the day, which is not easy unless you have bottom heat; or else in pots or in boxes not less than 4 in. in depth, which means that an ordinary seedbox won’t do; or else in bowls filled with peat fibre, put into a warm cupboard of about 60 degrees, if you have such a thing – I suppose that a hot-air linen cupboard would meet this requirement, and would keep them in the dark until 5 or 6 in. of growth had risen from the crowns. They must not be exposed to strong light until then, and in any case never to the rays of the sun. For the same reasons, of warmth and shade, I imagine that they could be successfully started in their boxes, pots, or bowls under the staging of a greenhouse. They must always be kept moist, and the tips of the crowns should not be covered with soil.
‘The ordinary old English lily of the valley has the sweetest scent of all, but the large-flowered variety called Fortin’s Giant has its value, because it flowers rather later and thus prolongs the season by about a fortnight.’
Christmas rose – Helleborus niger.
Hellebores also make excellent winter house plants, potted up and brought inside. Helleborus niger in particular, with its architectural seedpods, is very long-flowering, from Christmas until April or even May, and can be replanted in the garden. You can also force it into flower a little early. It’ll take a year or two to recover, but if you have plenty, it’s worth it.
‘Let me pass on a hint,’ Vita says. ‘It concerns the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger. If you happen to have an old clump in your garden, dig bits of it up and pot them into deep pots; put an inverted pot over each; keep them in the dark for a couple of weeks, and see what happens. You will find that the stalks are taller, and above all you will find that the flowers are of a purity and a whiteness they never achieved outside, not even under the protection of a cloche.
‘I know I shall be told that the Christmas rose does not like being disturbed. It is one of those plants with that reputation, but I am not at all sure that the reputation is wholly deserved. If you lift your clump with a large ball of soil, I guarantee that you will find it settling down again quite happily. It may not give of its best the first year, and for that reason it is advisable to stagger the potted clumps, some this year and some the next, planting them out into the open turn by turn.’
Cyclamen persica on a Sissinghurst window ledge.
With just the minimal addition of a little background heat, you could bring inside slightly tender things such as Persian cyclamen, C. persica. Cyclamen were then, as now, an excellent winter and a particularly good Christmas mainstay. This is what Vita has to say about persica:
‘I went to a Christmas party given by a neighbour of mine, a member of a great hereditary firm of seedsmen, almost feudal in their family tradition. His baptismal name, most appropriate to the season, was Noel. All the things appertaining to a cocktail party were standing about, on tables; but the thing that instantly caught my eye was a pot-plant of cyclamen I had not seen for years.
‘Delicate in its quality, subtle in its scent, which resembles the scent of wood-violets, it stood there in a corner by itself, looking so modest and Jane-Austen-like among its far grander companions. It had a freshness and an innocence about it, a sort of adolescent look, rather frightened at finding itself in company of orchids and choice azaleas and glasses filled with champagne cocktails.
‘It was the little Persian cyclamen, in its original size before it had got “improved” by nurserymen and swollen into its present inflated form. May I here make a protest against the fashion for exaggerating the size of flowers? Bigger, but not thereby better. Those vast begonias; those tree-trunk delphiniums; those mops of chrysanthemums, all those things called giganteum – does anyone really like them, except the growers who get the gold medals?
‘Ah, no, I thought, looking at the little Persian cyclamen, white, pink-tipped, shy, unobtrusive, demure …
‘I have never seen it growing wild in Persia. Apparently it grows wild also in Cyprus and in Rhodes.
‘I wish it were easier to obtain. You can buy or be given the big cyclamen at any florist’s shop, and I am not saying anything against them. They are a wonderful stand-by at this time of the year, and with due care their corms should last year after year, reviving again in July or August to start on their job of flowering once more before next Christmas. But handsome though they are, these big Christmas-present cyclamen, they do not possess the Tom-tit, Jenny-wren, leveret-eared character of the little Persian.’
Vita also gives us practical advice about how to look after any indoor cyclamen after Christmas:
‘This is the time of year [February and March] when people begin to get worried about their pots of cyclamen and how to treat them in the ensuing months. Don’t throw it away. It will repeat its beauty for you year after year if you treat it right. Treating it right means (1) keeping it moist so long as it continues to flower and to carry leaves; (2) letting it dry off by degrees after the last buds have opened and faded away; (3) keeping it, still in its pot, unwatered, in a frost-proof place during the remaining cold weeks, and then standing it out of doors, still unwatered, still in its pot, throughout the spring and early summer in a shady place; (4) starting it into life again in July or August. Starting it into life again merely means giving it water again – very simple. It will then begin, quite quickly, to show new buds all over the corm; but to get the best out of it you ought then to re-pot it. It likes a rather loose soil, made up of fibrous loam, some gritty sand, and a handful of bonemeal, all mixed well together. Do not bury the corm; it should sit on top, three-quarters visible. Do not water too much at first, water more generously when autumn comes and you bring your pots into the shelter of a warm greenhouse if you have one; or on to a warm window-sill if you have not.
‘Do not ever, at any time, give too much water. If you do, your plant will very quickly notify you by turning its leaves yellow and by developing a soft rot in the stems of the flowers.
‘[Once they’ve finished flowering,] sin
k the pots out of doors in a shady place into a bed of peat or ashes, up to the rim. This … retains just the right amount of moisture without any need for watering throughout the months when the corm needs to rest. Do not keep the same corm for more than two or three years. At the end of that time the quality of the flowers begins to deteriorate, although a second-year corm should produce a larger quantity of flower than a first-year corm. I should not mind the diminished size, myself, since whopping ogreish flowers hold no special charm for me, but that is a matter of taste … Never, pull a yellowing leaf away. In so doing you may strip off a bit of the skin of the corm, and thus do damage. Cut it off with a knife. Don’t tug. On the other hand, always pull the flower stalk away vertically should you want to detach it from the corm. I did know that much, though the bit about the leaf was new to me.’
For something more exotic, orchids such as those of the genus Phalaenopsis have become very fashionable as easy-to-look-after house plants for us all – they can be stored not necessarily in a greenhouse but on a deep, cool window ledge. But the pansy orchid Paphiopedilum is much more beautiful and extraordinary:
‘Anyone with a slightly heated greenhouse, say 45 degrees to 50 degrees can count on a succession of flowers from a few pots of Cypripedium insigne [now called Paphiopedilum insigne], the most easily grown of all orchids, the Lady’s Slipper type, with the big pouch and the wing-like petals. I cannot imagine a better Christmas present than a well-filled pot, for the flower has an astonishing faculty for lasting several weeks either on the plant or picked for a vase, and the plant itself will survive for many years. I don’t believe that a greenhouse would be necessary: a window-sill in a room where the temperature never dropped below 45 degrees should suffice. They do not like very strong sunlight, and they do like plenty of water.
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