Audrey Hepburn once said, ‘To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow,’ and, growing up in the Netherlands during World War II, she was someone for whom the certainty of tomorrow was not guaranteed.
Gardening is a hopeful activity. I’m easy prey for the seed catalogues when they arrive, or ‘garden porn’ as my daughter calls them. I sit in the winter gloom, flicking through the pages of ripe plums, vibrant, perfect carrots and tumbling strawberries and I can see them in my garden. It will be exactly like the photos. Exactly.
Experience tells me that it certainly will never be like the photos – but it will still be magical. Growing your own fruit and vegetables, from planting to plate, is something so ultimately satisfying – but with possibly a little angst and slug-induced anger thrown in along the way.
The thing with planting is that you know what to expect. You plant a Salvia and a Salvia grows and the pollinating insects rejoice. It’s the unexpected that brings a shift. I don’t mean weeds here; weeds are totally expected; but sometimes a plant will surprise you.
I moved to my current house in the spring three years ago. Not all my annual plants were up then, but I tried to move everything that I could. I was running out of time though. It was a rented house and I needed to be out by a certain time on that last day. I spent the day cleaning and did a last dash around the garden to check that all my old friends were safely at the new house, in their new beds. I have no idea how I missed the Hollyhocks.
The Hollyhocks had stood around my sitting room window for years and, stalwarts that they are, each summer they had shot out of the rubbish soil and decorated the old bricks with glorious, blowsy flowers. I loved them and, for some reason, I left them.
By the time I realised my mistake the landlord of my rented house had ripped out my garden – the Lavender, Salvias, Lilac… ripped out the Copper Beech hedge that housed the nesting Wrens in the spring and replaced it with wire and posts… and generally made the area around the house into a barren, sterile, desert. Too late to retrieve the Hollyhocks.
Two years passed. I would not buy new seeds as they would be not ‘my’ Hollyhocks. Last autumn I moved around a few of the plants from my old house to different beds and in early spring this year a shoot poked out of the ground in the new bed that I didn’t remember planting. My other half declared it a Butterbur – we have them all along the river here – but I knew it was a Hollyhock.
The shoot grew up, the leaves formed and I could see the buds growing and then, a few days ago, one of ‘my’ Hollyhocks flowered triumphantly in the new garden.
I know it’s not earth-shattering but, to me, it’s absolutely joyful. Plants can be old friends. To have this one survive my thoughtlessness and sneak a seed in on another plant to ultimately queen it over the garden is fabulous. She is a beauty and may she scatter her seeds far and wide in this corner of Norfolk.
Norfolk Notes 