23-Sept September’s Garden Jewels

The flowers most often noticed tend to be sunflowers, Fuschias, Asters, Penstemons, Agapanthus, Nicotiana, Salvias, Echinops, Sedums, Nemesias, stocks and endless geraniums and petunias in terracotta pots and window boxes. In parks it is Abutilons, Cannas, Begonias, Hibiscus, Coleas and Ricinus that seem currently to be favourites in bedding schemes. In herbaceous borders you can usually expect to find Monarda, Echinacea, Rudbeckia, Helenium, Coreopsis, Phygelia, Lobelia cardinalis and the ever popular Japanese anemones. In water gardens there are still lilies but it is worth seeking out the intensely blue pickerel weed Pontederia cordata which can be seen at Wisley.

Other eye-catchers are the vivid blue Ceratostigmas and Lithospermums, vivid red kaffir lily Schizostylis and glowing pinks of Crinum powellii and the Colchicums. Nearly all of the plants we notice this month have been introduced from other countries all over the world e.g. Ceratostigma (China), Kaffir lily (South Africa), Penstemons (Mexico) and Hibiscus which is said to have originally “been transplanted from the gardens of Africa to the gardens of the curious”.

One of the great joys of the month are the autumn bulbs whose rapid flowering is often associated with the first rains of autumn in their home countries. Most famous of these are the leafless Colchicums which originate from stony hillsides in southern Europe. Their roots and seeds were used to treat severe gout and rheumatism, often with the unfortunate side effect of “violent purging”. Too large a dose and you could even be poisoned. A woman in the old Covent garden market died after eating a Colchicum bulb confusing it for an onion. There flowers almost seem to glow when seen in woodland and a fine collection of garden varieties can be seen at Wisley with C. Rosy Dawn possibly topping the list for colour.

Another group of bulbs with pink flowers seen this month are the shocking pink Nerines. In 1659 a Dutch ship set off from Japan and was shipwrecked along the shores of Guernsey in the English channel. Some bulbs, which were part of its cargo, washed up and went on to establish themselves. Being so beautiful they were encouraged and some were sent to Covent Garden market to be sold. Demand quickly outstripped supply for what were then thought to be Japanese lilies.

It was only later their true home was discovered to be the southern cape of Africa and Table mountain in particular. One of the most impressive and common to be seen in London gardens is N. bowdenii. It was named after a Mr Bowden who had the foresight in the late nineteenth century to send some bulbs to his mother in Devon and ask her to grow them.

The other smaller bulbs we see looking so fresh beneath trees now are the cyclamens. They arrived much earlier in the late sixteenth century and were called sowbreads as they were thought to be eaten by wild boars, especially in Sicily. Apothecaries sold them in the belief they could halt hair loss if placed in the nostrils. They were also popular with would be lovers as it was thought whoever was encouraged to eat them would fall madly in love. Another extravagant claim was that they hastened childbirth. Consequently pregnant women were afraid to walk near them and so they would be surrounded by sticks to avoid any accidental encounters. Cyclamen hederifolium with all its varieties and leaf patterns is the one we see the most, although in windows we may notice the non-hardy indoor cyclamens which originate from Persia.

Sunflowers are one of the most loved of all garden plants with many Londoners at this time of year competing to reach the Royal Horticultural standard height of sixteen feet. Being such an emblem of the sun they were grown by the Incas, who even carved them into their temples. The ones we see originally came from north America where even modern red ones are still bred today in Colorado. Gaugin noted that Van Gogh loved them so much he had over a dozen paintings of them in his bedroom.

Two other ubiquitous garden plants this month are michaelmas daisies and Japanese anemones. As the first of these seeds so freely we also see it covering areas of waste ground. The one most often seen is Aster novi belgii which was named after New Amsterdam, now New York, where its seeds were first collected in the seventeenth century. There are over three hundred different michaelmas daisies and they hybridise so easily it is little wonder the American botanist Asa Gray called them a “rascally genus that reduced her to despair”. In England they were not thought at first sufficiently ornamental to include in our gardens until William Robinson, the Irish Victorian gardener and owner of Gravetye manor, brought them back into popularity. Now we can see a host of showy pink forms all over London.

For some bizarre reason Japanese anemones are often now the sole flower to be seen in many London front gardens. They originate in China rather than Japan and were introduced there by a botanist living in Nagasaki. It was Robert Fortune who first brought them to England having found some growing in a Shanghai churchyard in 1844. Many climbers have now had time to reach a good height and so we tend to notice them more, especially trumpet vines (Campsis), cup and saucer vines (Cobaea) and climbing nasturtiums (Tropaeolum). Rarer climbers such as Thlandiantha dubia (Kew) and Ipomoea lobata (Wisley) are worth seeking out as well as the strange climbing geranium at Chelsea physic garden.

One final garden plant that causes a little amusement if found this month is Miss Wilmott’s ghost Eryngium giganteum.

Legend has it that the once fabulously rich Miss Wilmott who lived at Warley in Essex employed over one hundred gardeners. Notoriously tetchy, she is said to have asked Queen Victoria on a royal visit to keep to the path. She has also come to be known for always discarding the seeds of an Iranian sea holly E. giganteum when visiting other people’s gardens. This resulted in steel blue flowers with ghostly white bracts appearing at some time in the future to remind everyone of her visit.