In the eight years we have been here, the landscape has never bleached to this degree. In the most part our West Country moisture has kept the fields green, but the heat and month or more without rain has had its influence. A blond horizon backdrops the garden where the Tump hasn’t re-grown after the hay cut, and the high fields around us throw a September light which, at the beginning of August, has been disorientating.
Past summers have only required me to water once or twice during the season, but this year the new planting has needed it more often and I have worked the beds with a fortnightly drench to encourage the roots down by soaking each pass deeply. The watering has done nothing for the fissures which have opened up in the beds. Some are wide enough to put your hand down to the wrist and have got me thinking that, if I had the time, this would be a perfect way of working a summer injection of humus deep into the ground, if I could feed it into the cracks. It would plug the gaps that sometimes run straight through root balls and help to protect roots which must be feeling the drought more directly for this exposure. Deep in the beds, where the planting is already closed over, they worry me less, but in the new planting where the local microclimate provided by companionship is not quite there, I am seeing the damage.
Those plants that are adapted to a hot, dry summer have shown their roots in simply not flinching and the thistles have been notable. Miss Willmott’s Ghost, the biennial Eryngium giganteum, is luminous in the truest sense of the word. Firing starry outbursts amongst the Bupleurum falcatum the growth is platinum white in bright light. This is only the second or third generation of self-sown seedlings and, so far, the volunteers have not become a problem in the gravel garden. I have had them take over in thin ground, where they have seized a window amongst perennials that have not taken to the conditions as heartily, so we will yet see if they are going to make a takeover in the gravel by the barns. If they do, it will be where the seedlings find their way into the crowns of perennials that are slow off the mark in the spring. Like a wedge splitting a boulder, they can, and do, have their influence in their pioneering nature.
Eryngium giganteum, Bupleurum falcatum and Crambe maritima
Look closely and the thistles are magnets for wildlife. The hum of the bees on the eryngium is audible long before you see them, and the butterflies are now working the platforms of nectar that are obviously suspended high in the artichokes. We have a variety from Paul Barney of Edulis Nursery called ‘Bere’ and those that escaped the harvest – within a week they are suddenly too tough to eat – are now in flower. Though this year they must be a foot shorter for the drought, they still rise above the trough behind them and draw the eye through the gauziness of the herb garden. They have had no water for they are adapted mediterraneans and follow the rainfall with leaves that flush in the autumn and spring.
Right now, the neon-violet buzz of flower has taken all their energy and we have cleared the lower limbs of old leaves to enjoy this moment and not be distracted by tattered yellowing growth that is obviously no longer necessary. Cynara cardunculus (Scolymus Group) (main image) is spectacular in every way, each plant needing a good square metre to reach up and out. When the flowers dim and I start to see September regrowth at the base I will fell the lot to put the energy into new leaf, rather than it going into seed production, so that we have them during the winter. A mild one will see a mound of new foliage sail through unscathed. A silvery architecture in the bare kitchen garden.
Though I could write at length about the other thistles that I have invited into the garden, the notable one that rises head and shoulders above the rest is Cirsium canum. Stand beside it and this Russian native will dwarf you, literally, the bright violet-pink flowers teetering on tall stalks just out of reach. I suspect, if I had not watered the perennial garden, that the foliage would have burned more than it has, for it is fabulously lush in the first half of the summer. Like a giant awakening, the energy in its new growth is audible in foliage that is shiny and squeaky with life when you corral it into hoops in May to prevent it from toppling. I do not know, if one was to grow it on ground that was less retentive, whether it would be lesser in every way and need less staking. I also don’t know yet if it will be a seeder. Derry Watkins of Special Plants says her plants haven’t seeded. Yet. Just in case, I cut them to the base last year after flowering having been stung previously by Cirsium tuberosum when I was looking for a thistle that would do the same job. I think I will do the same this year if they won’t leave too much of a hole in the garden around them.
Cirsium canum
Cirsium canum
Cirsium tuberosum
Cirsium tuberosum
Though Cirsium tuberosum is similar in appearance, being more glaucous and less glossy, this Witshire native is, in my opinion, not a plant to be trusted in a garden. Given open ground and a window of opportuntity, it proved itself to be a monster in my stock beds. The wind-blown seed parachuted some distance and, though the seedlings were easy and graphically visible in their lust for life, the unseen few soon wedged their way into the crowns of perennials to send down taproots that were all but impossible to remove and top growth that rejoiced in being alive. When I was preparing the new garden, I jumped my stock plants of them into the rough grass that lines the ditch and here the competition has seen them in check and in balance. Stepping through meadowsweet and willow herb they look good in appropriate company and your eye can travel from the Russians in the garden to the natives in the ditch and be happy, so far, in the knowledge that each has found its place.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 4 August 2018
The last week has seen a subtle shift, with a hint of the next season in the air. With cool nights and mist lolling in the hollows, the garden is between two seasons. The brilliant lythrum spires have finally run out of bud and, like sparklers fizzing their length, are suddenly extinguished. The dry days have been spun with the flock from the white rosebay willow herb caught on the breeze. I have planted it on the edges of the garden to blur the boundaries and, after weeks of flower, it is finally running to seed. I know it will need managing as it is a prodigious runner, but thank goodness it is not like our pink native Chamaenerion angustifolium, for the the seed is sterile.
This week’s bunch is a push against this mood, which can all too easily descend as summer runs out of steam and autumn is yet to take over. Over the years I’ve learned to plan for the between seasons lull and now no longer fear it. The Angelica sylvestris is a perfect example of a plant that steps in to fill the gap. In the ditch where we have cleared the damp ground of bramble they are now seeding freely. Although this wetland native has been wonderful since the spring, with it’s coppery foliage and architectural loftiness, the month of August is really its moment. It has been all but invisible for a while, with the grasses staking their position earlier on, but now the pristine umbels are held amongst their spent, tawny seedheads.
Angelica sylvestris
Some years, when we walk the ditch early in the season, you can spot a particularly fine form with dark, plum-coloured foliage. The dark stems are always a lovely feature of the Angelica but, coupled with dark leaves, they can not be bettered. Each year I mean to save seed of the best forms, but have never remembered to mark the plants before they are over and browned to skeletons. This autumn I plan to bring a selection called ‘Vicar’s Mead’ into the damper, lower slopes of the new garden. I have grown it without success in London, where it was too dry for it and mildew took its toll, but I trust the ground to be hearty enough here. Though biennial Angelica sylvestris will seed freely and, as long as you leave a number of seedlings, you will always get a succession.
In the garden, I have a particularly lovely form of the perennial Angelica edulis, which is planted through the white Persicaria amplexicaule. The substance and loftiness of the umbels with their horizontal conclusion is a good compliment to the finely drawn verticals, which echo the now spent grasses that surround the angelicas in the ditch. Persicaria is a mainstay of my plantings, which I have depended on for years. Happy with the cool of company at the root and with its head out in the sun, its lush foliage is an excellent team player. Good for the first half of the summer with its overlapping shield-shaped leaves, you know the season is progressing when the first spires arrive at the end of July. Again, August is their month, but they will sail through September and still be firing away in October with the asters. Here, for contrast with the blue, is a new favourite, Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’, which is tall enough to be making its way through the Verbena macdougalii ‘Lavender Spires’, and is an enlivening shade of hot pink.
Persicaria amplexicaule ‘September Spires’
The Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’ is a late-season grass. Slow to get started in the early summer and needing space early on so as not to be overwhelmed by early-into-leaf companions. An American native known as Switch Grass, it is happiest on lean ground and in bright conditions. Here it is better in soil that is drier or it will lean and topple. I have it on the upper, free-draining slopes where it is already showing colour with reddened tips to the foliage. The plum-coloured flowering panicles are so fine and delicate that you can see through their dusky framework. By the end of the month they will ascend to a final height of about a metre and will then go on to colour brilliantly in October, fiery and lit with their own inner light it seems.
Panicum virgatum ‘Rehbraun’
I have them planted close, but not too close, to the Cirsium canum, which is as lush as the grass is fine. I bought this perennial thistle from Special Plants where Derry Watkins has it growing in her garden. She swore then that it wasn’t a seeder, as I had been stung by its similar cousin, the native Cirsium tuberosum. The latter has now been banished from the garden to the ditch banks for bad behaviour in the seeding department and, for the past three years, has been kept in check by the competition. When I last saw Derry and asked her if her C. canum had started to seed she said, “a little”, which was due caution, so I will raze my plants when the main show is over to avoid the inevitable. Their stature, reach and poise are beautiful though, the brilliant pink thimbles of flower spotting colour in mid-air just above our heads and humming with bees.
Cirsium canum
Succisa pratensis
Though at an altogether smaller scale, the Devil’s Bit Scabious has a similar feeling in the suspension of flower on wiry stems. Another native, Succisa pratensis is a late-performing meadow dweller, happiest where the soil is moist and picking up where many other natives have gone over in August. My original plant, a dark blue selection called ‘Derby Purple’ was the parent of the seedlings in this bunch. They came easily from seed, germinating the same autumn they were sown and flowering just a year later in the new plantings. Although the flowers are darker than the native, they are not as rich as their parent, but they are a wonderful thing to have hovering around in this between season moment. A neat rosette of foliage, that will slowly increase and clump, is easily combined in well-mannered company. I will keep them away from the Cirsium and run them instead through the openly spaced Switch Grass and be happy in the knowledge that their contribution will help to bridge the season.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 19 August 2017
The melancholy thistle (Cirsium heterophyllum) were a late arrival at our Chelsea Flower Show garden last year. We were moving slowly and surely into the last few days of planting up the garden and Peter Clay, our plant-meister at Crocus, rolled up with a car boot full. We were in the process of studding the wildflower turf with special moments, acid yellow Zizia aurea from North America, scarlet Tulipa sprengeri, white camassias, and marsh orchids collected from Peter’s own land, to name just a few. He said it was his custom, in the last few days of the Chelsea build, to do a trawl of some of the specialist nurseries just in case there was an undiscovered prize that the garden had been waiting for.
The melancholy thistle were just that, standing strong at that point and still in textured bud at about a foot high, but you could see they were set on taller things. I didn’t want the garden to be an all-singing, all-dancing place. I wanted people to imagine they were somewhere real, where there were still things to look forward to. So I planted them under our pollarded willow and, over the course of the show, they grew tall and provided a sense of potential with their spineless, silver-felted foliage and beautiful scalloped buds.
Cirsium heterophyllum (bottom right) in the Chatsworth Laurent Perrier Garden at the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show
When the garden was dismantled I took one of the thistles as a memento. They had taken on a far greater significance during the course of the show, since I was standing amongst them when one of my most loved musicians complimented me on the garden and I invited her in to have a closer look. It was a chance happening which caught me completely by surprise and, out of nervousness, I talked far too much. Suddenly the bubble was burst, she had to leave, and I missed my chance to express my admiration. I felt foolish for perhaps having overwhelmed her and, as I pondered the thistles, a little sad that I had not simply let her look. These sorts of experiences are what gardens are made of and, back home, the memory of the meeting grew with the thistle and I haven’t been able to pass the plant this year without thinking of it.
“Despite the size and resonance of its shaving-brush flowers, I have no intention of introducing it into the garden…”
A fairly rare British native, Cirsium heterophyllum can be found in wet meadows and on river banks in the uplands of Scotland, Wales and Northern Britain. So I found it a special place that I thought it might like on a bank where we have spring seepage that keeps the ground moist. It spreads rhizomatously and my solitary plant has doubled its domain this year, and, so far, is holding its own amongst the meadow grasses. Despite the size and resonance of its shaving-brush flowers, I have no intention of introducing it into the garden, as I can tell that it would be mingling with, and then choking, its neighbours in no time. However, checked by company in the meadow, it is a fine addition, glowing like a magenta beacon for a month in June and July.
Cirsium heterophyllum in meadow grass on our damp bank
The flowers tilt ruefully to one side whilst maturing, and this is believed to be the origin of its common name. The ancient medical ‘Doctrine of Signatures’ states that plants resembling particular parts of the body can be used to treat ailments of those parts of the body. And so the thistle was was used to treat melancholy, as well as numerous respiratory ailments. In his Complete Herbal (1653) Nicholas Culpeper states, “…the decoction of the thistle in wine being drank, expels superfluous melancholy out of the body, and makes a man as merry as a cricket; …my opinion is, that it is the best remedy against all melancholy diseases that grows; they that please may use it.”
“…the decoction of the thistle in wine being drank, expels superfluous melancholy out of the body, and makes a man as merry as a cricket…”–Nicholas Culpeper, The Complete Herbal (1653)
I must admit to being more merry than melancholy that it has taken so quickly here, and I hope it will colonise the damp ground around it so that one day this part of the upper meadow will blaze. To help, I harvested a seed head picked just before the seeds were dispersed by the wind. I will sow it fresh, straight onto compost, and then top it with grit to keep off the slugs and ensure it doesn’t rot. With luck we may see seedlings this growing season. I will leave them undisturbed over winter and then prick them out to grow on next spring. I expect to be able to plant them out as the weather cools next September, for a bank full is sure to eclipse any lingering sadness.
Words: Dan Pearson/Chelsea photograph: Allan Pollok-Morris/Other photographs: Huw Morgan & Dan Pearson
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