Gardens
Criminal tendencies
Ursula Buchan
True gardeners are always willing to share a plant with a chum. That is what marks them out from the common, selfish herd and makes gardening so agreeable or so it is said. Which is all very fine, but I am beginning to think that I have caused more misery with my generosity than ever I could have done out of meanness.
As a result of my open-handedness, I have certain friends whom I cannot now look in the face without blushing from unadmitted guilt. One of these is a QC in Rutland, who seeks respite from a gruelling workload in cultivating his garden. He has had plants from me which, in their own way, show criminal tendencies quite as marked as the alleged murderers and bank- robbers on whose behalf he works so assid- uously.
Take the yellow hollyhock, for example. I was given a plant of this by a friend, who had it from a famous plant collector, who found it in the Caucasus. (Now, as every keen gardener knows, few things in the world of gardening are more attractive than being able to trace a plant's lineage back to a legal wild collection.) For some years, I was happy to give such a distin- guished guest garden-room. It had pretty pale-yellow flowers on sturdy five-foot-tall stems in summer and an enduring bright green corrugated leaf. What is more, it was a model of decorum, setting only as much seed as would ensure its continuing exis- tence. I do not know what happened last summer; perhaps it was the heat, but this plant suddenly began to spill its seed with the abandon of Onan the budgerigar. This year no nook, cranny or crevice is free from seedlings — and plenty of them.
Last year, I gave away one or two plants to my friend the barrister. Now, when he
goes out into the quiet and calm of his gar- den to grapple mentally with a tricky jury speech, he must wrestle instead with the tenacious roots of Alcaea rugosa.
I am not sure he will forgive me this time for passing on an unsuitable plant, for I have got as much 'form' for it as his clients for assault and battery. After all, it was I who gave him Phlomis russelliana, a thug of a herbaceous Jerusalem sage, not to men- tion Geranium maculatum, the tuberous- rooted cranesbill which pops up every; where. I think I may have to come clean and ask for 11 similar cases to be TIC'd.
The path to Hell is paved with these attractive, but invasive symbols of my good intentions. Frankly, it is unwise to admire anything when going round my garden, if you do not want to be handed a plastic bag containing a generous handful of future trouble.
Even though I acknowledge the problem, I have not yet learned from experience. Only last week, in an attempt to give a knowledgeable friend something different, I saddled her with the hairless version of Alchemilla mollis. This differs from the ordinary Lady's Mantle barely perceptibly but it will seed about just as freely.
In mitigation, it has to be said that I have been the victim, as well as perpetrator, of this anti-social crime. The way I acquired the yellow hollyhock and the Lady's Mantle are examples of that. And, at least I have had the sense not to give my lawyer friend Rumex sanguineus var. sanguineus.
This is the fancy name for a plant known colloquially, and in our household exple- tively, as the Bloody Dock. When it first appears in spring, the leaves are blood-red, and make a good talking-point on tours round the garden. However, by the time it runs up to flower (now), it does not look very different from the dock we used to rub on nettle stings as children, to which it is closely related. This is the moment to cut it back, for woe betide you if it is left to set seed. I was given it by a knowledgeable and generous farmer's wife, who certainly meant me no harm.
Worse still, long ago, before I knew how to decline an offer graciously, a neighbour succeeded in giving me the wickedly spreading yellow-flowered Sedum acre. Looking back, I see that was a criminal thing to do. But then, I am hardly in a posi- tion to cast the first stonecrop.
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