British Flowers Week 2018: Sweet peas

British Flowers Week starts today, so I thought I'd try to post every day this week. Starting off with a small gardening victory.

I met up with Sara from My Flower Patch and her husband when they came to London for a few days back in March. It was snowing and cold so we found a nice tapas restaurant in Bloomsbury and stayed there in the warm all afternoon. She told me about the planning and organising ahead of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show - Sara is a member of Flowers From The Farm and they had their first stand at the show in May. I didn't envy her - it sounded like so much hard work. It paid off in the end as they won a gold medal!

When Sara asked me what I was growing this year, I told her I'd planned to sow sweet peas but I had left it too late. She told me a tip (which I think Gill Hodgson, who founded Flowers from the Farm, had passed on to her) which was to sow them in the small pots you get from a takeaway, on damp kitchen paper or cotton wool pads, and keep them indoors until they germinate. She said if I was lucky I would have flowers in September!

So the week after that, I washed all the pots after a Friday night thali from the local Sri Lankan grocery, I lay folded strips of kitchen paper inside each one, added a few drops of water so they were damp, and spaced out a few sweet pea seeds inside every pot. Then put the lids on and placed them on a window sill above a radiator. I checked them each day, and if they were drying up I added a few more drops of water. It was kind of like growing cress on blotting paper at school, except these were covered. And I never got excited about eating cress, whereas I do get excited about cutting sweet peas for a vase.

After a week, most of the seeds had germinated. I planted them in small, tall pots.

Fast forward three months and I have my first sweet peas flowering! The stems are a bit stumpy; unlike the amazing long stems I've grown before from winter sowings.

But they're pretty and they smell gorgeous.

The day after Helen died, I took some flowers round for her parents and nieces. I had cut some hellebores, apple mint, and bluebells from the garden and bought British sweet peas, narcissi, and tulips. I hoped the gentle scent would be comforting and not overwhelming or even irritating. Fortunately, Helen's mother said it was nice to have flowers again because they'd had to throw out the wilted ones which were given when Helen was ill.

It's hard to find the motivation to do things when you're troubled or when you're grieving. When I visited Helen's parents after the funeral, her mother told me that she didn't feel like gardening, and I could really empathise. I asked if she'd like some plants because I had too many, and she said OK. So the next time I went round, I took some sweet peas and cosmos. I went round last week and saw the sweet peas are in a beautiful homemade wigwam, and the cosmos are in the flower bed. Busy Lizzies are planted up in containers hanging from the fence, and the garden is looking lovely and loved. We talked about Helen and there's sadness and anger and confusion and guilt. But there's tenderness and tiny pieces of joy as well.

Sweet peas mean delicate pleasures in the Victorian language of flowers, but I've just seen that they also symbolise departure. This feels especially poignant this year. I also have another friend in mind - I don't want to name them in case they don't want me to, but I know they're going through a hard time now and sweet peas are special flowers for them.

For all of the healing these flowers can bring, I'm glad I managed to grow them. So thank you for the nudge, Sara.

Shakespeare 400: Tragic heroines and passionate pilgrims

It's exactly 400 years since our greatest ever writer died, and I'm off to Bankside this afternoon to join in the Shakespeare celebrations with about a million other people. We won't float off down the river like poor, sweet Ophelia though. You can see this gorgeous Millais painting in Tate Britain, along with his Mariana (from Measure for Measure) and Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott in the same room, if tragic, fictional heroines float your boat.

I used Romeo and Juliet, my favourite play, to illuminate my post for his birthday/deathday last year. Last summer, my little sister (who's autistic and has a limited vocabulary) half-read, half-listened to me reading this rather awesome version of the story as part of the summer reading challenge that children can do through their local library.

I was so pleased when I found out David Austin produce a gorgeous, scented Juliet rose (the peachy rose in the bouquet above), which opens up like a bowl (below).

But I was heartbroken when all but two farms stopped producing my favourite cut rose: the stunning and incredibly-scented Rosalind, named after the character from As You Like It (the blush-pink rose below; the green-tinged rose is Miranda, named after the character from The Tempest).

Emily (aka Shakespeare's Cymbeline) is another cut rose that's hard to find now. It has such a sweet, fruity scent. This was the first purely Emily rose bouquet I made during my short time at David Austin.

I was even more heartbroken when I found out earlier this year that the cut flower department at David Austin is no more, which is all the more heartbreaking given their wonderful new varieties, and the love and care that the florist-growers take when handling them. They know their stuff far better than urban, relatively newbie florists like me ever could. You can still buy the roses wholesale and florists like me will be happy to use them to make your bouquets, but you can't order bouquets to be made up at the heart of David Austin in Albrighton. You can still see their beautiful roses at their rose garden and they continue to grow and develop new varieties, including the new Roald Dahl rose, which will be launched at RHS Chelsea in May and which I am ridiculously excited about! I had planned to go to Chelsea this year, but as my old supervisor, Ann Saxby, is only going to set up on the first day, I won't bother - I will see her when she stays the full week at Hampton Court instead. Some things are more important than being first on the scene.

He that is thy friend indeed,

He will help thee in thy need:

If thou sorrow, he will weep;

If thou wake, he cannot sleep:

Thus of every grief in heart

He with thee doth bear a part.

These are certain signs to know

Faithful friend from flattering foe.

Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim XVIII

The Chelsea Flower Show and the Gunpowder Tea Plot

You can now have afternoon tea at the House of Commons while Parliament is in recess during the summer, which sounds rather wonderful to me. So I took a magazine photograph of the Palace of Westminster tea and a picture of a flowery Union Jack flag (designed to celebrate 100 years of the Chelsea Flower Show) and stuck them on a jam jar. I filled the jam jar with bits from the garden – roses, scabious, orange thyme and chocolate mint. It smelt beautiful.

I found it difficult to get the exposure right because of the white roses, especially when the white roses were positioned on the side.

I have no idea what varieties of tea they serve at the House of Commons. I suspect they don’t serve gunpowder tea (which is a real tea; I haven’t just made it up), but if anyone is lucky enough to have afternoon tea there and discovers that they do serve it, please let me know!

The Balcony Gardener

One sad thing about moving to a flat has been the loss of a garden. But I am very fortunate in that my dad still lets me use his garden and greenhouse to grow things, and our flat has a little balcony.

Isabelle Palmer has written a wonderful book just for small spaces like ours, called The Balcony Gardener. As well as chapters for absolute newcomers to gardening in general, it also has lots of ideas for making the most of small balconies, roof gardens (we should be so lucky!) and even windowboxes. Well, as soon as I'd started to read her book, I knew we needed to use our balcony for more than just hanging out the washing!

I went to the RHS Wisley Flower Show last weekend. It was nice - there were many different growers from the ones I saw at RHS Chelsea, and because it's later in the year, there were beautiful displays of different types of flowers, as well as different things for sale. At Chelsea, I bought basil and pennyroyal seeds from Jekka's Herb Farm. At Wisley, I bought herb plants from Hooksgreen Herbs. At the May show, there were stunning displays of daffodils, grown in special conditions so that they all flowered at the same time. At the September show, I became a bit of a bulboholic, especially when I learnt that the grower was from Bridgend (where I've been visiting friends since 1998).

So last week I went to look for a balcony trough and planted up the herbs. I tried to plant them according to the conditions needed for them (thank you, Jekka), but I think I got the lemon mint wrong and it should have gone in a single pot. Hey ho. We'll see how well they survive. Here they are on the balcony. I know, gardening and floristry are all about odd numbers, and I did plan to just put three single pots at the bottom and one somewhere else. But...there isn't really anywhere else except right by the door (accident-prone person plus tripping hazard equals mess plus swearing). The top pot contains (left to right) lemon mint, orange scented thyme, and marjoram 'Gold Splash'. The single pots are (left to right) bay, blackcurrant sage, myrtle and rosemary 'Sudbury Blue'.

It's a shame the weather's starting to get cooler and the days are getting shorter!

I'm hoping that they survive well into spring. In flower language, mint means virtue, myrtle means love and marriage, sage means health and a long life, and thyme means courage and happiness. They're all good sentiments for weddings, I think, and they look beautiful and smell good. The blackcurrant sage has beautiful red flowers and the rosemary has pale blue flowers, but I don't think they'll be flowering in spring.

Here are some more herbs that I grew from seed. From left to right: sweet basil, cinnamon basil, upright pennyroyal, and another cinnamon basil. One cinnamon basil is now sitting with the sweet basil in the kitchen, the pennyroyal is on a windowsill in the lounge, and I have wrapped up one of each basil for a friend who likes gardening and cooking Italian food.

Chelsea Flower Show 2012

Now that the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is upon us this week, I realise I never posted about the Chelsea Flower Show at the end of May. It was my first visit to the show and I absolutely loved it. I spent half of the day there, but I wish I’d had longer – there was so much to see and so many growers to speak to.

Apart from the usual suspects (roses, courtesy of David Austin and Harkness), I was especially bowled over by some of the other displays. One was a wall of about 70 different cultivars of daffodils by Walkers Bulbs. Another was an innovative display featuring the Bullring, the Jewellery Quarter, canalside, and a Mini (which was originally manufactured in Longbridge, Birmingham) by Birmingham City Council, who were incredibly friendly and informative.  I have a soft spot for Birmingham, since I’ve been spending a lot of my free time there over the last nine months. I’m only too familiar with the distinctive Selfridges building and I recently made my first trip to the Jewellery Quarter.

But my favourite exhibit, which I kept going back to, was a stunning display of cottage garden flowers by Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants. A trip up to their nursery in Hampshire is on my ‘to do’ list! Just look at their flowers.

And finally, Leucanthemum 'Freak' could be the winner of best new name!

London calling

I entered the London heat of the Chelsea Florist of the Year competition. I didn’t qualify, but I had lots of fun sketching and creating my design (the theme was a table centre for the British Olympic team), and got some useful feedback from the judges – technically, I did well, but I used too many ideas.

It was the college day at New Covent Garden Flower Market as well, so it was a good excuse to take some photos of the market. Can you see why I feel so chirpy every time I walk in? It’s such an incredible place. As you can see, people are getting ready for Christmas already!