The charm of the fleeting
Emma Tennant ANNUALS AND BIENNIALS by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix Macmillan, £19.99, pp. 288 This book is billed as 'the first major illustrated work on annuals for over 150 years'. For once the publisher's hype is true, and the statement shows just how unfashionable annuals (and biennials, which are included in the book) are now, and have been for many years. They are generally perceived to be old-fashioned, unsophisticated, labour-intensive and chiefly suitable for the cutting border, the children's plot, the hanging baskets outside the pub, or a civic display of the sort scorned by our influential taste police, (who have forgotten that Gertrude Jekyll used drifts of scarlet salvias in her mixed borders).
Ironically, where annuals do have a place in a fashionable garden of the 1990s it is most likely to be in a so-called 'wildflower meadow', an authentic version of which is extremely hard to recreate. Fortunes must have been wasted by ignorant gardeners who think that by mixing the seeds of annu- al cornfield weeds with that of perennial grasses, and scattering them on their rich garden soil, they will produce something like the sheep-cropped, flower-studded turf of the South Downs or the Derbyshire dales. Their cornflowers, poppies and heart's ease look very pretty in the first year, but after that they are never seen again, and the flowery mead of Pre- Raphaelite vision soon comes to resemble an abandoned piece of waste ground.
However, help is now at hand in the per- son of Dr Martyn Rix, a Cambridge-trained botanist who is also an experienced practi- cal gardener. The combination is much rarer than one might expect. Although this is not a 'how-to' manual, it does include a couple of pages of invaluable advice on the best ways of fitting annuals into your plot, and a couple more on the ecology of annu- als in the wild, whether they come from California, Chile, Australia, the Mediter- ranean or elsewhere.
Annuals and Biennials is the 11th volume in the remarkable 'Garden Plant' series written by Dr Rix, who also took many of the photographs. Other spreads are by Roger Phillips, who began his career as a painter. The artist's eye of both authors is
apparent on every page. As in the previous volumes in the series, the genera are arranged in botanical order, and illustrated with pictures of annuals growing in gardens and in the wild, as well as with pages of individual specimens beautifully arranged in the manner of a 17th-century flori- legium. There are many memorable images. Alcea setosa, a tall white holly- hock, is seen growing wild in Turkey with the dark blue Mediterranean in the back- ground. On the next page, yellow, red and pink hollyhocks look equally majestic against a dark green hedge in a Dorset vil- lage garden. Rarities are shown in botanic gardens including those at Leiden, Ventnor and Kew and in Eccleston Square in Lon- don, where Roger Phillips is in charge of planting. Others are photographed in their natural habitats. Dorotheanthus (as we must now call our old friend Mesembryan- themum) grows by the sea in South Africa, Vicia villosa, mixed with poppies in Spain, makes a painterly sight, and Nicotiana trigonophylla near Palm Springs reminds one that there is more to the American desert than gambling and golf.
The scholarly captions are crisp and informative. I was fascinated to learn, for instance, that the cornflower, which I had always thought of as an archetypal weed of cultivated ground, also grows on rocky slopes and pine forests in Turkey. Cerinthe major `Purpurascens' is a Mediterranean annual which nobody ever saw in a garden until, recently, it became a hot favourite. Now I learn that it returned to Europe as a garden plant having been popularised in Australia and New Zealand.
One problem for authors of books which aim to be comprehensive is what to do about the vast number of new varieties put on the market every year. Whole volumes have been written about single genera such as sweet peas or pansies, but they are out of date almost as soon as they are printed. In such cases Rix and Phillips have includ- ed a small but mouth-watering selection of the varieties currently available.
Some of the photographs of pansies were taken at Monet's garden at Giverny in Nor- mandy. They show inspiring colour combi- nations which include other traditional bedding-out subjects such as tulips, hyacinths and wallflowers. It is high time that this style of gardening returned to fashion. Bedding out is a most effective way of providing colour over a long season and it has a distinguished horticultural pedigree, having been developed as a way of displaying the many half-hardy annuals and biennials that were introduced in the 19th century. Petunias, calccolarias, salvias, antirrhinums, they are all here in glorious colour. Millions of pounds of lottery money are now being spent on the restoration of public parks throughout Britain. Those in charge of such projects should visit Giverny, and come back full of ideas which will give our public open spaces the fillip they so badly need. I hope they will also go to Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire, where the magnificent parterres have been restored to full Victorian flamboyance.
Propagation is one of the greatest plea- sures of the true gardener, and growing annuals from seed is the easiest of all forms of propagation. I still remember the excite- ment I felt as a child when a packet of what looked like dust grew, in a few weeks, into a sheet of sky-blue Nemophila menziesii. This book shows Nemophila in its native habitat, the sage bush scrub of California, but it grows just as happily in my wet, cold garden in Scotland.
Winter is for armchair gardening. There are few greater pleasures than to sit by the fire and see, in the mind's eye, next year's garden. There will be no weeds, no slugs, no pests or blights. Everything will look as if it has been grown by Martyn Rix and photographed by Roger Phillips. I look for- ward to many happy evenings with this book in one hand and my seed order book in the other. And it will make the perfect Christmas present for friends and relations aged from nine to 90.
Digitalis purpurca, white form.
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