Xanthe White talks plants
Narcissus –an early sign of spring
Q When I was growing up, jonquils always appeared in our house on the 11th of July – my brother’s birthday. Even today, my father still brings my mother a bunch of jonquils – just like the ones he brought to the hospital on the day my brother was born. While winter this year was undoubtedly warmer, it is also a reminder to me that these were the fresh flowers for sale in the middle of winter in 1974 – and have been ever since.
A People are always surprised when they see daffodils in winter months because they think of us as a sign of spring, yet the seasons have always been more fluid than that. I think of the flowers appearing throughout the year like a well-composed symphony. While there are moments when the spaces between notes or beats are sparser, the music is always still playing.
In winter it may be the colour of citrus ripening, or the sweet scent of daphne emerging after the shortest day, before camellias and magnolias sweep into the mix. Then, in spring, the orchestra gathers pace starts its slow crescendo until summer when the solos must be triumphant to be noticed above the cacophony. Then the entire garden dances together till autumn when, exhausted, it collapses tumbling into a heap after the bacchanal.
As it all crumples back into the earth it always seems like all life is well and truly defeated. And for a moment it almost is. But then, just after this quiet breath when the garden is at its most still, we daffodils start to ring and sing out beneath the trees. And just like the arrival of Christmas decorations everyone exclaims: “But surely it’s too soon!”
Q I’m often guilty of this! Yet as I get older you start to see these patterns more clearly and to anticipate them.
Every year I’ve learnt that the four magnolias in my garden don’t bloom together. Instead, the tree at the top of the section flowers first, followed by the tree to the west and last but not least those right outside our dining room finish it off as the first tree comes into leaf. We’ve wondered if it’s because of the amount of sun, but those at the bottom get more or perhaps shelter in the canopy of other trees or where the frost sits in the valley. There is little rhyme or reason but year after year the buds open.
A Just like early blooms there are early gardens, which have their own microclimates triggering a particular flowering cycle. And some plants too have become set in a pattern that is out of step with close relatives. When you live in a place for a while you start to mark these trees and use the plants to map our memories and to mark the seasons. It’s lovely to think that children remember walking past a certain tree on their way to school or in their grandparents’ garden.
Q I used to walk past a row of hibiscus when I was at school and always picked one to take home. An ant would often emerge and wander down my arm, confused and disrupted from its feast of nectar and being suddenly pulled away from a path to its nest. I can still draw forth a picture in my mind of the hibiscus, my hand, my Roman sandals and the street as it was then with its little houses and generous sections..
A Those old gardens were where we used to prosper. Now it seems harder to remind people we need to be planted in the autumn. It seems that your lives have become such a constant bacchanal with everything on your plates at all times that planning ahead is not such a normal part of life. And yet it’s not just memory and beauty that make us important to a garden; amongst an orchard our early blooms help support insects that will then pollinate the blossoms so they can set fruit.
I would like to think that remembering in the autumn to plant jonquils for the winter is a way to slow your lives back down again. What happens in your gardens is in direct response to the seasons around you and can’t be imported from every corner of world. It is a true measure of time.
Q Like the arrival of a new child and a bunch of flowers on a bedside table…
A Picked fresh. ✤