Generation to generation we hand down knowledge of flowers and food

Iwish I was a gardener. Both sets of grandparents – my mother’s parents in the south of France and my father’s parents who passed away when I was in my early 20s – have and had gardens. In France, pine trees and oak supporting childhood treehouses; in Ireland, pear trees and picturebook trees, straight-brown-trunked with a balloon halo of green in my memory, whose only purpose seemed to have been in its branches thick for swinging. In both countries, hydrangeas. Purple fuchsias. Potted plants along driveways or porches. Buds and colours.

A lot of what we hand down in my family grows in the ground, the children of every generation in both countries raising small hands to pinch the buds of fuchsias with open mouths below to catch the fairy nectar.

Dandelion and daisy chains drying on bedroom doorknobs in summer. An allergy to queen Anne’s lace. A common dislike of lilies. A French family obsession with piment d’Espelette, a type of mild chilli pepper grown in our neighbouring Basque region.

Generation to generation we hand down knowledge of flowers and food. My parents’ garden – although menaced by Mayo deer indiscriminate and insatiable in their appetites – is orchard-planted and elderberry-bushed, their home filled with potted plants and garden-picked bouquets.

My sister’s south of France apartment is verdant and floral. But most of my flowers are grown in tattoo ink under my skin.

Lavender and daisy, foxglove and thistle, dog rose and apple blossom.

I am not a gardener, but my half my body’s a garden.

For her 60th birthday my mum got her first tattoo: single-needle delicate on her ankle her favourite flower, a dandelion gone to seed. My siblings and I went with her and each came out with the tiniest matching dandelion seed: small wishes blown with us wherever we go. We plant traditions and when they go to seed we watch them drift away and grow anew.

I am not a gardener. I live in an apartment and my balcony plants wither. Even when I had a garden, only invasive species grew.

I’m a friend to dandelions and daisies, that waxy ivy that chokes white picket fences.

I can’t keep plants alive, but if I could, I’d grow potatoes. My Irish nana made potato cakes: my favourite thing.

Like most family recipes, it was a collaboration. My granddad made the mash – splash of milk, heavy on the butter, the way it’s supposed to be. Still today when I’ve boiled my potatoes, I follow the way I learned from him, putting them ‘to bed’ under a teatowel for 15 minutes to steam them fluffy. My nana made the dough, then, flour in her hair and on her apron, handed the rolling pin to each grandchild in turn, letting us press inverted pint glasses into the dough to make flat circles for frying. My children never knew my Irish grandparents but they know to put the potatoes to bed after boiling and draining, know to powder the rolling pin with flour, love to press a pint glass into so many circles, add butter to the pan, then more butter to the potato cakes steaming on the plate. We grow the traditions and hand them down.

I am not a gardener, but if I had a garden I would grow hydrangeas.

The roads around the south of France are lined with them, paint-splashes of purple across the landscape. In my parents’ Mayo garden grow the coveted blue ones by the lake that the neighbours switch their soil to try grow but theirs come up pink every time.

I am not a gardener but every winter I dead-head the hydrangeas and the following summer they grow lush and brighter.

Enough years ago that my children remember this being forever, my immediate family grew a new tradition. Every midwinter I prune the withered hydrangeas – my tallest brother helps to reach the highest branches – and my siblings and children wheel barrows-full to the centre of the garden to create a giant spiral that we walk together with candles once darkness falls on the longest night of the year.

Although we don’t all live in the same country, we make a point to come together. Half a year later in midsummer we light a small fire close to where the hydrangea spiral sat, and write down our wishes.

We grow new traditions and we hand them down. Our hands show smaller hands how to peel potatoes, powder the rolling pin so it flattens the dough without sticking, press an upside-down pint glass to make circles, wait till the butter melts transparent to add more butter again. Our children suck the nectar from fuchsias and hang daisy chains from their bedroom door handles. They lie dried hydrangeas in a perfect spiral on the grass each winter and the following summer they remember. They watch dandelions go to seed, then with four breaths scatter their wishes to drift and land and grow again anew.