what's the point of flowers?

You might remember that earlier this year I was gloating about my first decent crop of sweetpeas. Like a milkmaid counting chickens, I saw years of success ahead: next year, sweetpeas in every bed! Growing through the roses, up the apple trees, around the new arbour. Why not aim higher - beg friends, neighbours and newsletter readers for their leftover loo-roll tubes - and attempt a National Collection?!

And then, my sweetpea megalomaniac dreams were crushed. (Or more accurately, powdered.) Slowly over every leaf, horrid, tacky muck. By which I mean, MILDEW. Urgh. The flowers were fine, but the plants as a whole looked like crap. Then half the leaves frisped for lack of water, and the flowers got attacked by aphids. (Sweetpeas are not robust enough to endure my usual aphids-on-roses treatment, which is to squish them, swearing loudly.)

Now, all but one clump of sweetpeas are DEAD, on the compost heap, a sad heap of crisp stalks and papery leaves.

What’s the point, I thought - all those hours spent choosing varieties, the months collecting loo rolls? Then the soaking of seeds, planting, watering, waiting, watching - for what? All of those flowers, faded to dust, waiting for a South London garden waste collection.

In spring, I sowed trays of annuals: soft apricots, mauves and purples to complement the roses. Hubris! A week ago, the knautia macedonia hadn't a bud in sight, the cosmos was spindly and the scented stocks and Chinese asters were barely a foot hight. (The packets promised 70cm tall!) All of these next to dying trees, dormant roses and wilting perennials: not so much an August gap as an August apocalypse. DOOM!

Then, we had the last stretch on the photo shoot for the new book. I didn’t look at the garden for a week, other than to throw the daily 160L of grey shower-and dishwater into the beds after dark, and collapse.

But then this weekend, looking at the garden properly in daylight…

Oh hey, cosmos Apricotta!

The Chinese asters, now two feet high, are actually flowering!

And - dahlias! Out of the nine tubers I bought, Dahlia Wizard of Oz is one of the three that did take:

AND, queen of the garden, fully as big as both my hands together, dahlia Belle Epoque.

Watching Arcadia at the weekend helped further restore my faith in flowers. One of the characters, Bernard (a total jerk) tells Valentine that his academic pursuit (on grouse numbers) is ‘trivial’. Valentine is crushed, before Hannah tells him that it doesn’t matter that all their work - on gardens, literature, maths - is, in the end, trivial. ‘It’s wanting to know that makes us matter’, she says: finding meaning in something enough to do it.

I shouldn’t have mourned the sweetpeas quite so much. Before the dahlias fade, it’ll be time to choose tulip bulbs (and check the bulbs I cleaned and pulled up for any sign of mould.) It’s cyclical, and the planning and sowing and watching is as much a part of the enjoyment as the flowers. Ephemeral? Yes. Trivial? Yes.

But standing in front of a dahlia that came up from a muddy tuber, watching cosmos recover and bloom, telling Vanessa Bell that she is a marvel1 (and that isn’t she clever for coming up a fourth time), finding beauty in things that last for just a day: it’s worth it, I think.

In brief:

• If you are after more to read on gardens: Horticulturalish has written this EXCELLENT piece on gardening for beginners. (My gateway drug plant was tomatoes.)

• Have you had your fill of ice-cold watermelon yet? No? Then can I recommend A NEW SALAD, which I made as a starter for a lunch party yesterday:

  • get yourself a tup of the co-op’s new whipped feta & herb dip or make your own (feta & yogurt & olive oil & chives together in a food processor)

  • cut large cubes of watermelon

  • cut large cubes galia melon

  • muddle these together on a big serving platter

  • scatter over finely cut cucumber (also cubes)

  • clingfilm and fridge this until needed

  • heat up a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil with 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes, finely chopped rosemary and the zest of 2 limes

  • leave it on a low heat for 2-3 minutes, then leave to cool

  • whisk the cooled oil with the juice of 2 limes and a generous pinch of salt

  • chop up two handfuls of salted peanuts

  • just before serving, dollop the whipped feta on top of the cold melon, drizzle over the chilli rosemary dressing and scatter over the peanuts.

    

• I won’t write lots about it here because reading about breast cancer stuff can be a bit much, but I was stunned to learn that that watching a particular scene in Arcadia inspired a well-known oncologist to develop life-saving chemotherapy for breast cancer patients: this was all the more of a weird coincidence because I’ve been reading a lot of his work recently. The doctor was Professor Michael Baum, and the article about his ‘moment’ watching Arcadia and the treatment he developed is free to read here in the BMJ.2

• I have just ordered a few more £13 dahlia plants from The Tetbury Flower Co to fill a few gaps because the first four they sent a couple of weeks back were superb - if you are similarly minded don’t forget to use their discount code FBOOK15 for 15% off. With my (hazy) maths I decided this meant the seventh plant was essentially free…

Thank you so much for reading this week’s newsletter! I hope you’ve had a nice relaxing Sunday - am off to empty the water bin AGAIN. xx