joe bennett

Our Southern correspondent in shining armour rides into battle in the name of his one true love: the beautiful, the ever true, the eternal… agapanthus

Of all the flowers that grace this fragile earth, which is the most romantic, the most poetic, the flower that sings most strongly to the yearning human heart? The rose? Don’t make me laugh. The rose is ruined, done to death by centuries of meddling. The rose is hybridised and florid, domesticated all the way unto duddery, a cliché of a flower, as corny as corn, overdressed, overblown and over-rated.

And the poets know it. It was no rose that Auden had in mind when he wrote: The years shall run like rabbits For in my arms I hold, The flower of the ages And the first love of the world

It was the agapanthus. You think I jest. I never jest. While the rose has been buggered about by horticulturists, and prettified by florists and drooled over by Valentine’s vultures, the agapanthus has swum serenely down history’s river, unchanged and unchanging. The agapanthus that flanks your drive, that masks your shed, that grows where you’ve despaired of growing anything else, is the same agapanthus that has always been, the agapanthus whose dancing blue simplicity enchanted Helen, Homer’s Helen, 2000 years ago and more, far on the ringing plain of windy Troy. Agapanthus, the flower of the ages.

If you cannot see the agapanthus’ beauty, be off with you. Go now, turn the page, go read the ads for ride-on mowers and insecticides. You will not be missed and you will not be alone. Auckland Council will be with you, dressed in its robes of self-importance, for it has declared the agapanthus an invasive weed. But who cares? The agapanthus will still be blooming when all the councillors are rotten and forgotten. For the agapanthus is the flower of love.

You doubt me? Never doubt me. Reach for your Greek dictionary – agape, the Greek for love, anthos for flower. Agapanthus. Just listen to it: agapanthus. No matter what it means, the sound alone is music. Is there a more heroic-sounding name in all of botany? What poem would it not adorn? They told me, Agapanthus, they told me you were dead; They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

Its name is as strong as it is beautiful. It is a name any king would be happy to rule by. …and on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Agapanthus, king of kings Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

It’s what Shelley would have written if he’d thought of it. Just as, had the happy thought occurred to him, Byron would have plumped for Agapanthus came down like a wolf on the fold And his cohorts were gleaming in silver and gold. And Eliot’s greatest poem would have been greater still had it begun:

Agapanthus you and I When the evening is laid out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table

But above all, the agapanthus is a moral exemplar. It has qualities we should all try to foster: humble, modest, undemanding. It endures. When winter comes, and every rose is but a bare pruned stick, the agapanthus stands green against the snows, its leaves glossy, barefaced against the weather. The agapanthus is beautiful and the agapanthus is brave and the agapanthus is good.

Holy Mary, mother of God, agapanthus now and in the hour of our death.