‘Among the scentless but more brightly coloured bits, I still had some gentians and some cyclamen neapolitanum, both pink and white, coming up through their beautifully marbled leaves which, if you look carefully, are seen to be never quite the same from plant to plant. They surprise with their infinite variety, more innocently than Cleopatra surprised her Antony.
‘Then I picked some sprays of Abutilon megapotamicum – it does not last well, once cut [for more on this see here] – which has been flowering since last June and shows no sign of stopping until a bad frost hits it. It grows against a south wall and is given some protection in winter, not very much protection, just a heap of coarse ashes over its roots and a curtain of hessian or sacking drawn across it when the weather becomes very severe.
‘I found some fine heads of polyanthus, entirely out of season, the blue Californian variety and some of the butter-and-cream Munstead, raised by Miss Gertrude Jekyll, that grand gardener to whom we owe so much. That was not a bad little bunch from out-of-doors in November.’
Finally, as Vita says, some of the rose leaves and hips are good for vases before they shrivel or drop: ‘The leaves of the rugosa rose, Blanc de Coubert, in either the single or the double form [I think there is only a double now available], also turn a very beautiful yellow at this time of year and are good for picking. This rose has every virtue; the flowers are intensely sweet-scented, they persist all through the summer, they are succeeded by bright red hips in autumn, as round as little apples, and the whole bush is a blaze of gold in November. The only disadvantage, for a small garden, might be the amount of room the bush takes up; it is a strong grower, like most of the rugosas, and will eventually spread to a width of four or five feet and to a height of a tall man. It is, however, very shapely, with its rounded head, and it never straggles.’
DECEMBER AND CHRISTMAS
‘We are into December, Mid-winter-monath in old Saxon, and what a difficult time it is to produce flowers to fill even a few vases in the house!’ Vita laments in 1954.
It’s easy for us to get tempted to buy stuff – amaryllis, lilies, bowls of forced hyacinths and ‘Paper White’ narcissi – but there’s something nicer about picking as much as possible to decorate your house from the garden, even if it’s quite a challenge.
‘The weeks between December 1st and January 1st are probably the most awkward from the point of view of the gardener who is asked to produce something to pick for the house. He, poor man, is expected to supply a succession of bunches and branches to enliven the rooms, especially over Christmas. His chrysanthemums are all over; and a good thing too, if they were those shaggy things the size of an Old English Sheepdog’s face. The far lovelier Korean chrysanthemums were over long ago, unless he had facilities for keeping them under glass. He must fall back on the autumn-flowering cherry, on the winter jasmine, on Viburnum fragrans, on the berrying cotoneasters, on the waxy tassels and red fruits of Arbutus unedo if he had the foresight to plant one in his garden years ago. There is very little else that he can find except a few stray Algerian iris poking up through their untidy leaves.
Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’ – autumn-flowering cherry.
‘I am in deep sympathy with this worried gardener, being a worried gardener myself, with a house clamouring for flowers when I haven’t got any.’
It is to the autumn-flowering cherry (see here), the winter jasmine (see here), Viburnum fragrans (see here), the berrying cotoneasters and berberis, as well as Arbutus unedo, that Vita turns:
‘One has to fall back upon the berried plants and amongst these I think Cotoneaster rugosa Henryii is one of the best. It is a graceful grower, throwing out long, red-berried sprays, with dark green, pointed, leathery leaves of especial beauty. It is not fussy as to soil and will flourish either in sun or shade, in fact, it can even be trained against a north wall, which is always one of the most difficult sites to find plants for in any garden. Berberis Thunbergii, either the dwarf form or the variety called purpurea, both so well known that perhaps they need no recommendation, will also thrive in sun or shade, and at this time of year flame into the sanguine colours of autumn. They should be planted in clumps in some neglected corner, and be left to take care of themselves until the time comes to cut them for what professional florists call “indoor decoration”, but what you and I call, more simply, something to fill the flower vases with. They have the additional merit of lasting a very long time in water.’
One of the loveliest things for Christmas picking, and particularly brilliant for adding long-lasting colour to festive door wreaths, is the strawberry tree Arbutus unedo, with its strawberry-crossed-with-lychee fruits at their best exactly now, for Christmas. ‘[It is] not very often seen in these islands, except in south-west Eire, where it grows wild, but is an attractive evergreen of manageable size and accommodating disposition. True, most varieties object to lime, belonging as they do to the family of ericaceae, like the heaths and the rhododendrons, but the one called Arbutus unedo can safely be planted in any reasonable soil.
‘To enumerate its virtues. It is, as I have said, evergreen. It will withstand sea-gales, being tough and woody. It has an amusing, shaggy, reddish bark. It can be grown in the open as a shrub, or trained against a wall, which perhaps shows off the bark to its fullest advantage, especially if you can place it where the setting sun will strike on it, as on the trunk of a Scots pine. Its waxy, pinkish-white flowers, hanging like clusters of tiny bells among the dark green foliage, are useful for picking until the first frost of November browns them; a drawback which can be obviated by a hurried picking when frost threatens. And, to my mind, its greatest charm is that it bears flower and fruit at the same time, so that you get the strawberry-like berries dangling red beneath the pale flowers. These berries are edible, but I do not recommend them. According to Pliny, who confused it with the real strawberry, the word unedo, from unum edo, means “I eat one”, thus indicating that you don’t come back for more.
‘After its virtues, its only fault: it is not quite hardy enough for very cold districts, or for the North.’
There are a couple of other plants which Vita liked for December vases and which are particularly useful for Christmas wreaths – celastrus and our native stinking iris (Iris foetidissima), which both have brilliantly coloured orange berries and last well in or out of water.
‘[In] November and December … [o]ne has to fall back on the berrying plants; and amongst these I would like to recommend the seldom-grown Celastrus orbiculatus. This is a rampant climber, which will writhe itself up into any old valueless fruit tree, apple or pear, or over the roof of a shed, or over any space not wanted for anything more choice. It is rather a dull green plant during the summer months; you would not notice it then at all; but in the autumn months of October and November it produces its butter-yellow berries which presently break open to show the orange seeds, garish as heraldry, gules and or, startling to pick for indoors when set in trails against dark wood panelling, but equally lovely against a white-painted wall.
‘It is a twisting thing. It wriggles itself into corkscrews, not to be disentangled, but this does not matter because it never needs pruning unless you want to keep it under control. My only need has been to haul it down from a tree into which it was growing too vigorously; a young prunus, which would soon have been smothered. Planted at the foot of an old dead or dying tree, it can be left to find its way upwards and hang down in beaded swags, rich for indoor picking, like thousands of tiny Hunter’s moons coming up over the eastern horizon on a frosty night.’
The wild Iris foetidissima, with its orange seeds filling its shiny green pods in December, is another stalwart: ‘A spike of the brightest orange caught my eye, half hidden by a clump of Berberis Thunbergii which had turned very much the same colour. They were both of an extraordinary brilliance in the low afternoon sunshine. I could not remember if I had planted them deliberately in juxtaposition, or if they had come together by a fortunate chance. Investigation revealed furth
er spikes: three-sided seed-pods cracked wide open to expose the violent clusters of the berries within. This was our native Iris foetidissima in its autumn dress, our only other native iris being the yellow waterside flag, I. pseudo-acorus …
‘No one would plant I. foetidissima for the sake of its name, which in English is rendered the Stinking iris and derives from the unpleasant smell of the leaves if you bruise them. There is, however, no need to bruise leaves, a wanton pastime, and you can call it the Gladdon or Gladwyn iris if you prefer, or even the Roast-beef Plant. Some etymologists think that Gladdon or Gladwyn are corruptions of Gladiolus, owing to a similarity between the sword-like leaves; but I wish someone would tell me how it got its roast-beef name.
‘Its flowers, small, and of a dingy mauve, are of no value or charm, nor should we be wise to pick them, because it is for the seed pods that we cherish it. Not that it needs much cherishing, and is even one of those amiable plants that will tolerate shade. Strugglers with shady gardens, or with difficult shaded areas, will doubtless note this point. The seedpods are for late autumn and winter decoration indoors, for the seeds have the unusual property of not dropping out when the pod bursts open, and will last for a long time in a vase; they look fine, and warm, under a table-lamp on a bleak evening. Miss Gertrude Jekyll used to advise hanging the bunch upside down for a bit, to stiffen the stalks; I dare say she was right; she was usually right, and had an experimental mind.
‘Let me not claim for the Gladdon iris that its crop of orange berries makes a subtle bunch or one which would appeal to flower-lovers of very delicate taste; it is frankly as coarse as it is showy, and has all the appearance of having been brought in by a pleased child after an afternoon’s ramble through the copse. Nevertheless, its brightness is welcome, and its coarseness can be lightened by a few sprays of its companion the berberis.’
Vita liked to have a few skeletal seedpods for winter decoration – and none better than alliums, brilliant June and July garden plants and something we should all collect for winter vases and Christmas decorations. You want to harvest them in July and August, before they get blown to pieces by the wind and rain of autumn, and then spray them silver for the Christmas tree. You can stand well away from the tree and just throw the alliums at it and they stick. The complex structure of their heads meeting the spines of the fir makes a firm union without any ribbon or string. That’s how I decorate our tree at Sissinghurst – with mainly natural things including lots of different alliums such as Allium rosenbachianum, A. hollandicum, A. christophii and the vast sparkler heads of A. schubertii, one of these perfect for the top of the tree.
Dried allium christophii heads for winter decoration.
Finally for Christmas, Vita always had a bunch of mistletoe, ‘pearled and dotted with tiny moons’, and was keen to encourage the odd clump to establish itself in the trees in the orchard:
‘Shakespeare called [mistletoe] baleful; but, as everybody knows, it is possessed of most serviceable properties if only you treat it right. It can avert lightning and thunderbolts, witchcraft and sorcery; it can extinguish fire; it can discover gold buried in the earth; it can cure ulcers and epilepsy; it can stimulate fertility in women and cattle. On the other hand, if you do not treat it right it can do dreadful things to you. It may even kill you as it killed Balder the Beautiful, whose mother neglected to exact an oath from it not to hurt her son “because it seemed too young to swear”.
‘The important thing, therefore, seems to be to learn as quickly and thoroughly as possible how to treat it right.
‘You must never cut it with iron, but always with gold. You must never let it touch the ground, but must catch it in a white cloth as it falls. This seems easy compared with the first stipulation, since even in these days most people do still possess a white cloth of some sort, a sheet, or a large handkerchief, whereas few of us can command a golden bagging-hook or even a knife with a blade of pure gold. You must never put it into a vase but must always suspend it, and after every traditional kiss the man must pick off one fruit – which is not a berry, although it looks like one – and when all the fruits have gone the magic of the kiss has gone also.
‘Folk-tales? He would be a bold man who attempted to explain or to explain away such ancient and widespread superstitions, ranging from furthest Asia into Europe and Africa. Mysterious and magical throughout all countries and all centuries, these tales may be read in Sir James Frazer’s monumental work in which he honoured that queer parasite, the mistletoe, with the title The Golden Bough.’
Mistletoe is just as popular now as it was in Vita’s day, grown in the old fruit orchards of Hereford and Shropshire, which are at the heart of its trade. There are still mistletoe auctions in Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire, where people travel from all corners to bid for great bundles to break up and sell in the buildup to Christmas.
Vita goes on to say: ‘So here let me concentrate rather on some botanical facts which Sir James Frazer disregards, and try to correct some popular misconceptions about the nature of the mistletoe.
‘We think of it as a parasite, but it is not a true parasite, only a semi-parasite, meaning that it does not entirely depend upon its host for nourishment, but gains some of its life from its own leaves. It belongs to an exceptional family, the Loranthaceae, comprising more than five hundred members, only one of which is a British-born subject – Viscum album, the Latin name for our English mistletoe.
‘The mistletoe, as we know it, grows on some trees and not on others. The worst mistake that we make is to believe that it grows most freely on the oak. It seldom does; and that is the reason why the Druids particularly esteemed the oak-borne mistletoe, for this was a rarity and thus had a special value. The mistletoe prefers the soft-barked trees: the apple, the ash, the hawthorn, the birch, the poplar, the willow, the maple, the Scots pine, the sycamore, the lime, and the cedar. It is seldom found on the pear, the alder, or the beech; and is most rare on the oak.
‘Another popular mistake concerning the propagation of this queer plant. It is commonly believed that birds carry the seeds. This is only half true. What really happens, by one of those extraordinarily complicated arrangements which Nature appears to favour, is that the bird (usually the missel-thrush) pecks off the white fruit for the sake of the seed inside it, and then gets worried by the sticky mess round the seed [which is indeed as sticky as chewing gum] and wipes his beak, much as we might wipe our muddy shoes on a doormat, and thereby deposits the seed in a crack of the bark, where it may, or may not, germinate.’
If you want to propagate it yourself and not leave it to the birds, ‘save the Christmas decorations; or, better still, get some fresh berries in February or March’, Vita urges. ‘These will be less withered and stand a better chance of germination. Squeeze the berry until it bursts, and stick the seed to the underside of a healthy young twig by means of the natural glue. Stick as many seeds as possible, to ensure a good percentage of germination, and also to ensure getting more than one plant, necessary for purposes of fertilization; in other words, you won’t get berries if you haven’t more than one plant. The best host-trees are the apple and the poplar, and you can be very successful also in starting it on hawthorns. Some people advocate cutting or scraping the twig before sticking the seed on to it, but you’ll get the best results from a healthy shoot with a smooth and clean bark.
‘After all this, apparently, you have to be very patient. The infant plant, always assuming that germination has taken place, will do very little for the first two years of its life. In its first April, that is to say a couple of months after it has been sown, it ought to show a green disc or finger, and that is all it will do until the following spring, when the first two leaves ought to appear, and after that it ought to go on increasing “at a rate of a geometrical progression”, until such time as you can cut your own berried bunch instead of buying it, to hang over the dinner-table.
‘It sounds all right and feasible, and would in any case be an amusing experiment for the ama
teur with a bit of extra leisure and an orchard of old apple trees to practise on. Commercially, it might prove profitable. Our Christmas mistletoe is quite expensive, and is, I understand, imported in vast quantities from abroad. Travellers between Calais and Paris must surely have noticed the lumps and clumps darkening like magpies’ nests the many neglected-looking strips of trees along the railway line in the North of France. Perhaps the neglect is deliberate; perhaps they pay a good dividend from all our markets, not only from Covent Garden.
‘Such are a few, a very few, legends and facts about the strange and wanton bunch we shall hang somewhere in our house this Christmas.’
CONDITIONING CUT FLOWERS
As an avid picker of home-grown flowers, Vita was keen to know all she could about the ways to extend the vase life of the plants she harvested, and she passed on the advice.
‘Perhaps I should entitle this article “In Your House”, or “Your Garden in Your House”, because I want to write something about cut flowers, inspired by an interesting letter from a gentleman describing himself as a botanist and horticulturist who has carried out researches on the subject [of making cut flowers last. In the spring] owners of gardens begin to pick more recklessly, with less dread of spoiling their outdoor show, but this pleasurable occupation does take a long time, and the busy woman wants to make her flowers last as long as possible.
‘“The cause of difficulties with cut flowers,” says my correspondent, “lies in the entry of air into the water-tubes of the flower stems during the period between cutting the flowers and placing them in water.” To prevent such disappointment, he recommends that you should place your newly cut flowers in recently boiled water while it is still just above tepid, i.e. not hot enough to sting your hand but warm enough to give your fingers an agreeable sensation of warmth.’ In my experiments with conditioning cut flowers I use just-off-boiling water, and know this to be very successful in extending the vase lives of most flowers. Particularly in the spring, when most stems are growing rapidly and so have little time to lay down any woodiness, or lignin, in their cell walls, I sear almost everything except bulbs (which do not need it – except for cut bluebells, which benefit from it hugely). By autumn, when stems have become more solid, it is much less important. Sear the bottom 10 per cent of the stem length.
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