The longest day of the year is already here. The dawn chorus starts whilst the clock still reads four and the fade of the gloaming lasts well after ten. We are rising early to be part of it and then eating too late, for it is hard to leave the garden to prepare supper. These light-filled days see growth literally reaching towards it and the fecundity is as its zenith on the right here and right now of the solstice. 

This time last year we were preparing for a big party that we held on the crown of The Tump on this special day. In the run up and with the moment focused, we became acutely aware of the time elongating and then slowing before we leaned into the other side. The three days before, when the energy in the garden was at its most expectant, and the three days after that saw it relax and spill and burgeon into the next phase of summer. The meadowsweet in the ditch exemplifies this tangible shift here at Hillside, the creamy luminosity and sweet perfume being at its height and the last flower to fade into the shortest night.

In the new planting beyond the barns, the remarkable architecture of the Onopordum bracteatum has been building to this moment. This is the first time they have flowered here, and this is also the first time I have grown them. When we go on our annual pilgrimage to Greece in the autumn, we often see their wreckage standing by the roadsides. They are one of the few things untouched by the voracious island goats. Seared by a hot summer, their foliage all but gone, just the tawny bones remaining where months of drought have reduced them back to the essential. A tall skeleton and a splayed seedhead that parachutes its seed from height into an autumn wind, then rain and the guarantee of a growing winter.

I gathered seed there from unidentified wild plants and already have them in the Sand Garden on the understanding now that they may be Onopordum bracteatum var creticum, which, although listed as endemic to Crete, is the most similar from the online research I have done. When I found Onopordum bracteatum listed by Growild Nursery, I ordered a packet to compare and contrast. In the autumn of 2023, I sowed a potful to overwinter in the cold frame. They germinated quickly, with fat, grey cotyledons and continued to grow their first foliage over winter, just as they would seize their growing season in the Southern Mediterranean. The distinctive first leaves were already spiny when they were pricked out in March and grew fast until they strained in their pots by planting time in early summer. I put a pair at the top of the steps on the new bank into our heavy native soil and a cluster in the sand garden around the wiry frame of Spartium junceum to conjure a Mediterranean coupling. Both positions in full sunshine and with plenty of space to satisfy their potential lust for life.

Last summer the rosettes grew fast into silver-white rosettes that your eye fell upon at distance. Those in good soil on the banks grew with an almost alarming speed that I feared might make the path impassable. Those in the sand grew more slowly, for having to find the nutrients in the soil that lay below the sand mulch. I expected the plants to suffer in the winter for being too wet, or to be slugged for their profusion of leaf, but they sailed through unscathed by the frosts. As soon as the weather warmed this spring, the beasts at the top of the slope began to stir, energy gathering in the rosette, with new leaves forming to feed the next chapter and an ascent of armoury that fleshed out the next.

The more usually seen Onopordum acanthium is a plant you learn to treat with respect, but O. bracteatum is armoured on every surface. The leaves have hidden thorns at the apex of each leaf tip, which face in and also out to create an impenetrable defence. Weeding amongst the foliage is almost impossible without being stabbed by the needles. The stems are an articulated  mass of silvery-grey barbs that jaggedly face this way and that and catch the light to highlight their formidable nature.

I have tried to gently touch the beast, carefully inserting my hands between the limbs to see if there is a way to test its weaponry, but it is impossible to come out unscathed for you misjudge the distances and the needles and their architecture. Simply put, they are not to be messed with. So, we admire them at a sensible distance and make a limber movement around them where they reach over the path. In the sun they are as brightly silver as any plant in the garden. In the half-light at the end of these long June evenings they glow and hold your eye until it is finally dark. By a full moon they stand ghostly and glowing and we stand close to take in this incredible June energy.

They will die after they have flowered, and I will leave them standing and find a way to harvest a seedhead without being wounded, to start the process all over again. I will sow fresh seed and, if I am lucky, will have a new set of seedlings to grow into next year and replenish the spaces these beautiful creatures leave in their passing. It will be interesting to see where they seed and how much they do here, for our Somerset hills couldn’t be more different from the rubbly slopes and roadsides of Greece. I will be sure to let you know if I have unleashed a beast that needs taming.

Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan

Published 21 June 2025