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BOUGAINVILLAEA, THAT LOVELY purple creeper that looks as if Nature had designed it specially to hang out for Coronations, royal processions, and occasions of great pomp and ceremony. (GGTC, 95)
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I HAVE ONLY to look out of my window to see a miracle. It is an old, hollow, shredded trunk. Its bark is like rotten black cardboard…. Yet through this sad and deathly passage there flows a stream of eager life. For this is a jasmine, and high above the father trunk the branches take on a strange green life. Old, old as the jasmine may be, it still spangles the early September days with quivering stars of silver, darts and foams and sheds its sweet spray over my wall on many bright mornings. (DTGP, 144–145)
BULBS
WHY SHOULD ONE want to go out to dinner when one can stay at home with the snowdrops, and enjoy them in solitude? It took a few million years to make a snowdrop. Surely one is justified in spending a few hours in studying the results? (DTGP, 265)
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SNOWDROPS STAND ROUND in a tiny square, like ballet girls waiting to dance. (ATR, 246)
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IT WILL BE generally agreed that the only way in which we can appreciate the beauty of snowdrops is by going out into the garden, lying flat on our backs in the mud, and gazing up at them from below. (GOTD, 44)
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Bendingdowners. You will not find this word in any botanical dictionary, but it seems to me to fill a long-felt want, because of the extremely large number of flowers such as snowdrops, whose beauty cannot be properly appreciated unless one’s body is in a position where the head is measurably lower than the sit-upon. (GOTM, 99)
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WHEN I LOOK at the cyclamen on my desk, with petals of the palest ivory—a cyclamen that looks like a flight of butterflies, frozen for a single, exquisite moment in the white heart of Time—then I try to think back from the petal to the bud, from the bud to the curling stem, from the stem to the first, fan-shaped leaf, and from that leaf to the tiny seed. (DTGP, 213)
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[THE MINIATURE CYCLAMEN] were engaged in a game of hide-and-seek among the ferns, for the wind had risen, and the ferns swayed backwards and forwards, so that there were moments when they were almost hidden, and one only saw a gleam of pink among the green…. I decided that there were few more profitable occupations than watching cyclamen playing hide-and-seek; part of every day must definitely be set aside for it. (SOTL, 86)
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THE CLUMPS OF autumn crocuses, which had been planted in drifts, in the wood … looked like a sort of celestial laundry, laid out to dry. (AVIAV, 207)
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[THE] DRAWBACK TO having too many lilies is that they insist on a party being given for them, and since they are so grand and elegant you have to try to be grand and elegant too, and that means dinner jackets, and hiring masses of very ugly silver, and it is all inclined to be rather expensive. (MH, 192)
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THE REGAL LILIES do indeed praise the Lord. Some of my own, last summer, were so exultant that they praised Him through no less than thirty snow-white trumpets on a single stem, and even the most accomplished angel could not do much better than that. (FFF, 44)
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I CANNOT IMAGINE what life would be like without the perennial enchantment of the lilies, picked from the garden, carried indoors, set in front of mirrors … and gloated upon. Sniffed and savoured, preferably in solitude, examined under magnifying glasses, and, of course, set to music. (DTKS, 175)
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[Nerine bowdenii] is tougher than you would think. After a night of frost, which has blackened the dahlias and made even the hardiest chrysanthemums look a little sorry for themselves, she will greet you in the morning with a rosy smile, her enchanting maquillage untarnished. (FFF, 56)
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Galtonia candicans … on an August night, when the moon is full, there is an almost ectoplasmic radiance around its petals. (FFF, 35)
HOW CAN ONE ignore … that singular and faintly sinister blossom Iris sibirica? This latter flower can certainly claim to be ‘exclusively’ dressed; for the petals of no other blossom has Nature designed so curious a fabric, veined with slate and violet and purple. (FFF, 40)
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ONE OF MY grandfathers died of a clump of iris stylosa; it enticed him from a sick bed on an angry evening in January, luring him through the snow-drifts with its blue and silver flames; he died of double pneumonia a few days later. It was probably worth it. (MH, 17)
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EACH STAGE OF our lives has its ‘signature’ flower, and those of us who keep diaries would have little difficulty in assigning to each year those flowers which are especially evocative…. Fritillaries are linked with my years as an undergraduate, because in the meadows of Magdalen [at Oxford University] they grow as profusely as anywhere in England…. Year after year, for generation after generation, these flowers have danced in the background through the lives of England’s youth. (FFF, 28)
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IF YOU CAN keep the conservatory ten degrees above freezing point, you can pick arums soon after Christmas, with great benefit to your spiritual life. With even one arum in the room it is impossible to think wicked thoughts; it would be like swearing in front of a nun; and if you do have a wicked thought, in spite of the arum, you must go out and have it in the hall, closing the door gently behind you. (MH, 180)
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IF YOU REALLY want your heart to dance with the daffodils you must draw squares, triangles and odd shapes in the soil, you must pack those shapes to the brim, you must put in at least six times as many daffodils as you expect to see, and then—ah then, when April comes, your heart will dance, lightly enough! (DTGP, 229)
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ONE SPRING DAY when I was rummaging about in the orchard, I saw a gleam of yellow under the old chestnut tree. I realized that this must come from some of the daffodils that had been given to a friend to ‘hide’…. Every autumn, when the new bulbs arrive, a proportion of them are handed out to any friends who may be around so that they may plant them in some secret place, where I can have the fun of discovering them in the spring. It is a sort of floral hide-and-seek which is vastly entertaining. (MH, 112)
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AS WE ALL know, the only way to plant daffodils is to pile them on to a tray, and then to run out into the orchard and hurl the tray into the air, planting them exactly where they fall. There may be other, less orthodox methods; if so they should be spurned. The tray, the ecstatic gesture— that is the only sure road to success. (MH, 171)
PERENNIALS
IF YOU HAVE a nice clump of foxgloves in your back garden you cannot ever be bored. There is the echo of all the sweet and liquid sounds of the country in their pale bells. In addition, I am told that their roots, if boiled and added to the soup, are guaranteed to make your most disagreeable enemy expire in considerable discomfort within twenty-four hours, but I have not tested this personally. (DTGP, 277)
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THE SILVER CENTAUREA —that strange plant whose leaves seem ice cold even in the heat of July, and are always stiff and shimmering, flaunting their frosty beauty in the heat of the most ardent suns. (AVIAV, 28)
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THESE ARE MINIATURE varieties of the common maidenhair [fern] … and some of them are so thickly embroidered on the underside with tiny spores, that through a magnifying glass they look like the most elaborate satin brocade that ever graced the Court of Louis xvi. (GGTC, 173–174)
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A CLUMP OF paeonies, to its owner, is something that is deeply rooted in his heart. These flowers are part of himself…. The owner of those paeonies has slaved for them, sacrificed himself for them, sometimes, I think, taken years off his life for them. They are not just ‘for cutting’. They are for living with, and maybe for dying with, too. (LOTS, 231)
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BY FAR THE most brilliant silver in Nature is afforded by [Senecio cineraria]. If you dropped a scarf of silver lamé on the lawn, on a cold night, and came out in the morning to find it shimmeri
ng with frost, you would reproduce the effect very prettily. When you set it side by side with one of the more common silver-leaved senecios, such as the species leucostachys, it shines with an almost arrogant brilliance and the poor leucostachys looks as drab as the little girls in the advertisements whose mothers have not used the right washing powder. (GOTD, 138)
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Senecio Cineraria RAMPARTS. This must be the mainstay of any grey group; even on the dullest days the leaves have a luminous sheen. In full sunshine they sparkle like newly minted metal and by moonlight they glow like the wings of a moth. (GOTM, 96)
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THE OLD RAMSHACKLE orchard was glistening with cowslips, thronging through the long grass grouping themselves, joining hands, dispersing, reappearing in duets and trios, as though they were obeying the directions of some shadowy choreographer. Cowslips are one of my ninety-nine most favourite flowers. (DTKS, 76)
MY FIRST ASPARAGUS bed was planted with three-year-old roots—to buy roots that were only two years old was unthinkable; before one could pick a bunch one would be dead or stricken with the palsy, or in the middle of war. (GOTD, 90)
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FOR MORE MODEST decorations, I would recommend another grass, which must surely be among the most delightful conceits ever devised by Nature…. This small charmer is afflicted with the name of Pennisetum villosum. Why it should be so burdened is a mystery, for when it is in seed it produces feathery nonsenses which suggest the tails of very small and ethereal rabbits bouncing in and out of a Disney playground. (GOTD, 204)
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[Dianthus WHITE LOVELINESS] … is a flower which might have been traced on the window-pane by the fingers of the frost. The petals, as you observe, are indented with miraculous delicacy, and the whole blossom is as light and ethereal as any of the young ladies in ‘Swan Lake’. However, if we are seeking for comparisons, perhaps the nearest we shall get is to one of those highly magnified photographs of snowflakes. (FFF, 23)
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PANSIES … ARE HIGHLY therapeutic in conditions of nervous stress…. Take out a chair on a summer evening, when there is thunder not only in the skies above you but in the whole world of men, lie back and let your eyes wander at will. All those faces! … You find yourself making up stories about them, you send them marching on great adventures, and even if the thunder growls, it seems to come from over the hills and far away. (FFF, 63)
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THE LOTUS—A FLOWER born to float like a swan on the surface of the lake, a flower whose petals demand the mirrored flattery of the water and the cool consolation of the leaves. (TAOFA, 18)
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THE PULSATILLAS … have the added charm of growing old gracefully; as soon as they have reached maturity they adorn themselves in the most elegant silver wigs, fashioned from the seed pods. When summer is gone, the wigs blow off with the first winds of winter, float far and wide, and eventually transform themselves into families of new pulsatillas. A more graceful method of perpetuating the species, you will agree, than is habitual among human beings. (GOTM, 116)
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A NATURALIZED WILD flower which should be in everybody’s garden—Mimulus guttatus … Why anybody every called it a monkey flower is something of a mystery; if we were in search of an animal metaphor I would have settled for a sort of mad yellow spaniel, with its tongue hanging out. It grows in shadow or in sunlight, in damp soil or in dry and once it has decided that you are a friend, you will never get rid of it. (GOTM, 144–145)
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ORCHIDS … ARE NATURE’S shameless assertion of the doctrine of art for art’s sake. (GOTD, 193)
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THE ORCHIDS WHICH you can grow are called Pleione formosana…. My orchids—I feel I have a sort of proprietary right in them—are not primarily designed for bosom-coverage, though they have looked enchanting on some, in their time. They are meant for gloating, and wonderment, and only on rare occasions for picking. (GOTD, 193)
ROSES
THE HEDGES ARE starred, spattered, enamelled—any word you like—with wild roses—for the roses need many words for their many ways—words that light on the page as delicately as they swing on their branches—words that flush and pale and flush again, as the roses glimmer from white to deepest pink. (ATR, 199)
THE LEMON PILLAR catches your attention and you realize the odiousness of comparisons, for this is a rose that is moonlit even in the blaze of noon. Stand over it, shade it from the sunlight, and it shines with a secret phosphorescence. (MH, 239)
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CONSIDER THE CLIMBING roses … after three or four years they were peeping into the upper windows, pressing their heads against the panes as though they were trying to see what was going on inside, and I cannot think of a more graceful compliment that a flower could pay to a man than to seem to seek entrance into his house. (MH, 240)
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THE MOST FEMININE flower in the world is Rosa gallica, Duchesse d’Angoulême. There is nothing brave or bold about this beauty; she is of the palest pink, with petals of striped silk, she blushes in the sunlight, and she is inclined to droop her head. When she does this, you may fear that she is swooning; not at all, it is merely her way. (GOTD, 102)
SUCCULENTS
THE COLOURS THAT you will find in cacti are colours to be found nowhere else in the world…. It is as though Nature kept a special part of her palette reserved from them, and whenever she happened to mix anything extra striking or bizarre, said to herself, ‘Nobody but a cactus could wear that’. (GGTC, 263)
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THERE ARE ALL sorts of materials in Nature, from the velvet of the pansy to the parchment of the magnolia. But for silks, pure, glistening, of the highest quality, you must go to the cactus. (GGTC, 264)
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THIS FLOWER IS a startling proof of the fact that when Nature decides to be vulgar—really vulgar—she can achieve effects of almost blinding beauty. For nothing could be more opulent, more blatant, more shamelessly exhibitionist than a bed of mesembryanthemum in full bloom. Magenta jostling scarlet, screaming at cinnamon, fighting with shocking pink, yelling against a dozen shades of orange and vermilion. (FFF, 51)
SHRUBS
IT IS NOT too much to say that if you were allowed no other shrub in your garden but the berberis, you could confidently expect to be in a state of mildly hysterical pleasure for nearly three-quarters of the year. (MH, 115)
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THE WORLD LOOKS quite different if you view it, calmly and objectively, from the shelter of a large rhododendron blossom, with a sort of scarlet tent over your head, and a speckled rug under your feet—though it is rather alarming when bumble-bees, the size of bullocks, peer in at the entrance, and buzz like sirens. (SOTL, 149–150)
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IT MAY SOUND affected to describe [the ‘Lady Chamberlain’ rhododendron] as a carillon in coral, but I can think of no other metaphor, for the branches are thickly hung with coral bells which seem, when the wind touches them, to be making music. (GOTD, 69)
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OF ALL THE chores in the garden, I find [dead-heading rhododendrons] the most agreeable…. I let the blossoms tumble to the earth so that they form a glowing pool of colour which makes them look, from a distance, as though Monet had been wandering around with a loaded brush. (GOTD, 70)
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I WAS GOING through a period of acute fuchsia intoxication—and indeed I still am. Fuchsias are among my ninety-nine most favourite flowers…. I could go on for hours, and probably shall, one day, about their white petticoats and their crimson ruffs and the incredible grace with which they dispose themselves. (SOTL, 193)
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FOR MANY OF us fuchsias are among the earliest flowers to which memory reverts … because, of course, we loved to ‘pop’ them. Even to this day, when Mr Page the gardener is not looking, I find it difficult to resist the temptation of bending down and giving a quick pop to one of the buds. This may not do the flower much good; one can only hope that it doesn’t do it much harm. Anyway, this is the sort of th
ing, perhaps, that helps to keep one young. (FFF, 31)
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[KALMIA] IS SURELY one of the most beautiful shrubs in Nature, with leaves like a myrtle, and tiny waxen flowers, not unlike a pink lily of the valley, gathered together in closely packed trusses. They would look exquisite under a glass case on a Victorian mantlepiece. (GOTD, 80)
THE SEXUAL PROCLIVITIES of the holly, particularly the lovely variegated gold and silvers, are remarkable, and suggest that they should be made the subject of an inquiry by a sort of horticultural Wolfenden Committee. For example, if you bought a Golden Queen and a Silver Queen you would naturally expect that they would at least have feminine tendencies. But no—both are firmly male. Golden King, on the other hand, is female. Curiouser and curiouser. Who thinks these names up? (GOTD, 84–85)
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IF THERE WERE a disease called Hydrangeaitis I should have it. Hydrangeas have been giving me pains in the neck and aches in the back—to say nothing of an appalling inferiority complex—for as long as I care to remember. (FFF, 39)
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A CLUMP OF Erica carnea aurea has foliage of such brilliant gold that soon after Christmas it gives the illusion of sunlight on the lawn. (GOTM, 38)
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ONCE A HEATHER garden is established there is nothing to be done but sit down and enjoy it or—if we are in a sportive mood—to lie down and roll on it. (GOTM, 42–43)
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WHAT OTHER FLOWER has so sure and masterly a manner with weeds? The erica carnea treats these tiresome things with a most elegant disdain; like a rich and lovely woman at a matinee, spreading herself out, so that her cloak and her mink and her accessories gently smother her neighbours. (MH, 155)
IN THE DISTANCE [there was] something that looked like a house on fire. It was a house, and it was on fire—with camellias. From the gravel path to the bedroom windows they blazed, twenty feet up, painting the walls pink and white and coral. (GGTC, 112)
Rhapsody in Green Page 2
