SO CLOSE TO MY HEART

Bleeding hearts were the flowers he picked for his first-born son, so no wonder these early summer stunners have a special hold over Monty Don

WHEN my first child was born at breakfast time in a hospital in London, I remember I had to go and give a talk to students that afternoon and I was reeling with happiness.

I was due back at the hospital that evening, so went into my garden to pick some flowers for my wife and son. What should I select for him?

I wanted him to have the best of our garden because it meant so much to Sarah and I, and therefore was as intimate and as precious a thing as I could give to him.

Of course, I picked what we had — I seem to Clematis and ‘Nelly Moser’, a spray of honeysuckle, some white centaurea and an arching spray of bleeding heart.

It was nothing particularly special, but it was representative of the garden and season on that special day.

Anyway, I have associated bleeding heart — or lady’s locket — with this time of year and his birthday ever since, although it is hardly the most appropriate plant for the strapping man that he has grown up to be. This year they have been early and in flower for ages, gently dropping their sanguine pink blooms for weeks. To call them ‘bleeding’ is quite wrong because no pink was ever pinker nor more sugary.

Dicentra is part of the same family that produces corydalis and fumaria, and is a very close cousin of the poppy.

There are 17 different species of dicentra, with D. spectabilis by far the most common in gardens— although it originates from China.

Sometimes they fail to set seed, which is to say that they either do or don’t - it is not something that varies from year to year.

But as a general rule they germinate easily and selfsown seedlings usually pop up all over the place and will spread quickly, to the detriment of surrounding plants like primroses if you are not careful.

They thrive in the cool shade of woodland margin which, in the garden, effectively means under the canopy of any deciduous shrub or small tree.

If you plant them in full sun they will not flower so freely or for so long and their foliage will be less luxuriant, so give them shelter.

Like all woodland plants they like an open, moistureretentive soil, so adding leaf mould as a mulch every year will make them happy.

If you want a real blood colour from your bleeding hearts then ‘Bacchanal’ or ‘Adrian Bloom’ are definitely the ones to go for, as they have crimson flowers. D. luxuriant is slightly less arterial but still certainly red.

Meanwhile, the white version, D.s. alba, is also good and contrasts better with its paler, more glaucous leaves.

There is a golden-leafed form, ‘Goldheart’; ‘Spring Morning’, which has paler pink flowers; and ‘Stuart Boothman’, which has delicate, ferny leaves with a slight mauve tinge to their grey-greenery.

The latter’s flowers also add a slight mauve tinge to its pinkery. However, these are all refinements for the Dicentra aficionado. The straight species is never less than good.

There is also a climbing dicentra, D. scandens, which is herbaceous and has flowers that can be either white or yellow, with delicate touches of pink to the tips, and which will continue to f lower for months during the summer and into autumn.

While it is not a showy, knock-’emdead sort of climber, it does have a rather lovely quiet charm and, although I have not grown it myself yet, it is certainly high on my shopping list of new plants.