I was on the case anyway, but a nudge from one of the most faithful readers – ‘Is there a blog due?’ – reminds me that there’s been quite a gap. In fact, I find ten lines or so which I began last month, and nothing posted for getting on for seven weeks. I can’t even find a convincing reason: trying to get back onto various horses at once, I suppose, & hampered by rather a lot of life getting in the way. At last, I’m feeling more or less back to normal, Mum’s been in and then out of hospital, and finally the long hot summer seems to be over. I can’t say I’m sorry.
From the Station Road gate, many indicators of how long I’ve been away. Tall stems of Verbena bonariensis bounce gawkily in the breeze in a gaudy mix of colour, clumps of sedum whose flowerheads have faded to an elderly pink amongst vivid yellows and crimsons, and the strikingly blue-purple hoods of Aconitum carmichaelii var arendsii, a cultivar of the Chinese wolfbane. Prompted by the Garden’s notes, I investigate the dark veins on the hoods and the ‘pompom of black anthered stamens’ within, careful not to touch: in common with all monkshoods, all parts of this plant are highly toxic.
The ‘autumn crocus’ Colchicum byzantium (despite its name, not a ‘true’ crocus at all – it has the Colchicaceae family to itself) reminds us of the season’s shift. Where the rain has penetrated the tree cover, the flowers are splayed flat on the earth. From pale mauve to a strident purple, some still stand upright; others lean towards the horizontal. Where the light catches them, the petals are almost translucent. They are sometimes known as naked ladies for their habit of shedding all foliage by mid-summer to reveal their pale funnel stems. And popping up everywhere under the trees are clumps of tiny Cyclamen hederafolium, ivy-leaved cyclamen or ‘sowbread’. Native to woodland, shrubby and rocky areas in the Mediterranean, the flowers might have been grouped to illustrate the pink spectrum, from a delicate almost bone china white to magenta. The acers beside the path are beginning to turn, their reddening leaves sheltering flimsy angled propellers making ready to spin their seeds groundwards. Autumnal it is, but the garden’s flowers show no sign of hunkering down for the winter.
As usual I’m drawn to the bee beds: purples and blues predominate here, too, though with a lightness of touch. A lovely leggy creature of forget-me-not blue turns out to be Salvia uliginosa, ‘bog sage’. Native to South America, from Brazil to Argentina, it is described by the RHS as a ‘robust herbaceous perennial’. Opposite, outside the glasshouses, other members of the Lamiaceae family join with the burnt orange of dahlias in a more intense celebration of colour. Salvia guaranitica ‘Blue Enigma’ (along with its Mexican neighbour Salvia patens, ‘spreading sage’ or ‘gentian sage’) catches my eye. It has flowers described by Gardeners’ World as ‘a most alluring’ deep blue. It was introduced to horticulture by Irish gardener and writer William Robinson, who led the reaction against artifice and formal Victorian gardens towards more naturalistic mixed plantings and the wild garden. And there’s a Cambridge connection: in 1866, at the age of 29, he joined the Linnaean Society, sponsored by, among others, Charles Darwin. I read that its leaves are ‘anise-scented’ when crushed and make a mental note to check this on the way out. The plant pops up on the Great Dixter web pages (’fairly hardy but watch it’), reminding me that a recent article has set me wondering if I can somehow combine a visit there with a short autumn break. I find I am missing a ladder-making workshop there today! I see that there is also a paler-flowered variety of the guaranitica called ‘Argentine Skies’, automatically securing it in my list of horticultural friends. Like the uliginosa a native of South America, Blue Enigma’s alternative common name is ‘Hummingbird Sage’.
Early in the mornings the main lawn is dotted with pinpricks of light where the sun catches the dew. On the raised bed at the edge of the New Zealand garden, patches of lacy cobweb draw my attention to a plant I’ve managed to ignore until now. The pirri-pirri bur Acaena novae-zelandiae was originally introduced into Britain from Australia and New Zealand, I learn, via seeds in imported wool but has become invasive, a problem particularly in habitats like cliffs and dunes where native species are already threatened.
There’s a rather refreshing back-to-work feel in the café and fortunately this is infectious. I’m intending my next creative piece to be written in the voice of the soil, but I’m unsure where to start, and hoping that I will find a soil expert to talk to, or at least someone who is passionate about earth. Meanwhile I try to scoop a handful of dirt from underneath the peonies but the ground is hard, dry and dusty and I can’t detect any smell. I remember my planned smell test on the salvia leaves as I pass and pick a couple to crush, but it takes considerable imagination to detect even the slightest hint of aniseed. Heading back towards the Station Road gate, to the right of the path there is a new bed featuring and describing the national collection of geraniums and behind this, two rows of corn eight or nine feet high. I’m sure the earth was bare, having been recently dug over, last time I was here. Have these monsters really grown so fast, or were they planted as mature specimens? Opposite, in front of the plant growth facility, a new bed of rosemary and lavenders, more relatives of the salvias, whose mingled scents are blown towards me as if straight from the Mediterranean.
Perhaps I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to summer. Tate Modern’s exhibition ‘Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs’ which I manage to catch in its final week transports me back to France and a garden of a different sort. Always treating his garden as an extension of his studio, when confined often to bed in his last years Matisse surrounded himself with leaves, flowers, fruits and birds cut out of painted paper, pinned to the walls but not too firmly so that they breathed and fluttered as if in a breeze. He constantly changed the arrangement of shapes as a gardener might move plants, so that his ‘garden’ evolved organically on the walls of the studio. And like a garden, the flux and proliferation of the form and colour mean that the work is always a work in progress, never finished.
Henri Matisse, pictured in his studio. Photograph: Lydia Delectorskaya /Succession Henri Matisse
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