Autumn equinox: flowers during chemotherapy

As it's the autumn equinox today, I thought I'd postpone the last instalment of the Florist on Tour to share autumnal flowers from last week.

It is now estimated that one in two of us born after 1960 will get cancer at some point in our lifetime. It's a sobering thought, which feels more real if you have loved ones with cancer. In the last few years, it seems like more people I know have had the disease, and it has hit young friends as well as older relatives. In my work at a hospice, I hear stories about the effect cancer has on people's lives - those bereaved as a result of it, and those currently dealing with their own or their loved ones'.

So when I was asked to do flowers for someone whose cancer treatment has affected their sense of taste and smell, leaving them unable to enjoy the sweet things they used to - simple pleasures such as cake, biscuits, and floral scents - I was only too willing. I did "roast dinner" flowers: a pumpkin from a local allotment, filled with my sage and rosemary, autumnal-hued peony leaves, and non-scented flowers. There were asters, sedum, and a single dahlia that have all flowered again this year, and hypericum from Blooming Green. I have to thank Simon Lycett for the tip about peony foliage - I have never thought to use it before.

I delivered them on a beautiful, hot day last week, and warned that they probably wouldn't last long - the combination of vegetables (fruit and veg give off ethylene, which speeds up the flower-wilting process) and hot weather wasn't helpful. But they were gladly received, and smelled without any horrible nausea. On one of the hottest days of the year, we all craved a roast dinner.

Simple pleasures. They don't cure cancer, unfortunately. But sometimes they are all we can turn to, to help to ease us through the rubbish that life throws at some of us.

If you have or care for someone with cancer, there is advice available here. And if things feel really difficult, the Samaritans are available 24 hours a day on the phone number 116 123 if you are in the UK.

Lewisham Seed Swap: Talk and demo on 21 February

Some exciting news for locals - I'll be doing a little talk and demo this month on growing your own flowers for cutting! You can see some photos here of the flowers I grew last summer - hopefully giving you a taste of things you could do with flowers you grow.

Below are the details of the Lewisham Seed Swap afternoon. I hope to see some of you there!

Save money by swapping seeds with other home, allotment and community gardeners.

Swap:

* Vegetable & Herb seeds

* Heirloom & Heritage Varieties

* Cut flower & Wild flower seeds

Fantastic gardening workshops.

‘Growing Veg in Small Spaces‘

Host: Dig This Nursery 

(New Cross Tomato Festival)

‘Grow Your Own Flower Bouquets-

Start A Cut Flower Garden!’

Host: Flowers by Shamini

‘Bees, Bugs & Butterflies-Gardening for wildlife’

Host: Alison Marsden, Garden by Design

Plus #AskAlison a gardening question.

With  Alison Marsden, Professional Garden Designer and Trainer

Date: Saturday 21 February
Time: 1-4pm
Venue: Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden Reginald Road, Deptford, SE8 4RS

Twitter @LewishamSeeds

The Cut Flower Plots at Hall Place

Have you been watching The Big Allotment Challenge? I watched the first series and felt a bit disappointed with the format - it seemed to be doing too many things at once. But this series, I am used to it, and I'm enjoying it for what it is much more. Maybe it's less about the process of growing (and there are programmes like Gardeners' World that show you how to grow, in more depth), and more about watching plants develop over a summer, and seeing what can be done with them. I've no interest in making jam or chutney (I live on Tiptree stuff, which has the bonus of providing me with pretty jars for flowers), and I don't care if my tomatoes are the same size and colour. I don't think allotmenteers need to have distinctions in floristry; as long as they can grow the flowers, they can just sell them to people like me! But it is interesting for me to see the difference in the results in vegetables and flowers, especially when some of the growers have chosen the same variety. And it's wonderful to see the different varieties.

Last summer I took my sister to Hall Place in Bexley, Kent a few times, and we walked around the cut flower plots. They are a florist's dream! There were different kinds of rudbeckia, dill reaching the sky, sunflowers, statice, cosmos, dahlias, rainbow-coloured chrysanthemums, asters, gypsophila, solidago, sweet peas, everlasting peas, cornflowers, and nigella (followed by pretty seed pods).

I am growing "Miss Saigon" hyacinths, so you can see why I was taken with this ruffled Antirrhinum "Madam Butterfly".

Yellow is the sunniest colour!

And I admire anyone, like the gardeners last night, who can grow rudbeckia. I've tried and failed twice, so I've given up for now.

If you like to grow vegetables and herbs, there is also a vegetable plot. I've not heard of anyone growing soya beans locally - will this trend take off? It'd be nice to have milkshakes made of Kent soya beans and strawberries!

Surprise London

I won’t be too slushy, but there are days when I fall in love with this city. When I used to travel to the centre from the suburbs as a child, it was usually for one of two things: visiting my mum’s office, which was just off Regent’s Street, or it was trips to Oxford  Circus for the summer and Christmas sales, at a time when there were only two sales a year and you didn’t see signs for ‘Mid Season Sale’ and ‘Blue Cross Sale’ every other week. This was a long time ago; I mean, we used to get the Jubilee Line from Charing Cross in the days before Canary Wharf!

Even though I just went to the city centre for one of two known things, it still felt magical and wonderful. I didn’t always know which shops my mum or dad would take me to, although I could usually hazard a guess. One time I walked around the perfume counters at Dickens and Jones with my mum. I must have been about seven, and I thought that if I could find a tiny bottle of perfume, I would be able to buy it with my Christmas money. As I looked around for something that was less than a pound, a salesperson handed me two perfume samples. My mouth dropped open and I just stared at her – as far as I was concerned, she had given me two  £15 bottles of perfume. For free! The woman said, ‘Aw. She’s struck dumb,’ to my mother, which I thought meant that I had suddenly become stupid, so then I felt a weird combination of delight, shock, gratitude, and confusion.

The point of that story is, it was the first time that I remember London surprising me. I had gone out expecting one thing, and been surprised and delighted by something else.

Last week, I went to London to take part in Gemma Seltzer’s Speak to Strangers Bankside project, and to photograph the Body Gossip flash mob on the South Bank. It was pouring with rain and even though I prefer not to carry an umbrella in central London (it’s far too crowded, it makes it hard to overtake people, and I’m not very tall) I thought I had better for the sake of my camera.

I came out of London Bridge Station and couldn’t move for people huddling by the entrance, sheltering from the rain. As I squeezed past, put my umbrella up and walked west, I saw a young man in a university graduation gown with a woman who I presumed was his mother. I thought: how random. I looked around but couldn’t see any other people in gowns. Then I started to cross over the road towards Southwark Cathedral, and it was like a scene from The Walking Dead, when all of a sudden, walkers come from nowhere. Only these weren’t zombie walkers, fortunately; just gowned ones. They all came out of the cathedral with parents and friends and partners, and lots of umbrellas.

It was fantastic. I had expected to run into office workers on their lunch break or groups of tourists, but not university graduates with gowns and umbrellas. There was the young woman who pulled her gown up over her head, like a hoodie. The mothers in saris. The older man holding an umbrella over his partner with a younger man behind them holding an umbrella over his girlfriend. It was all rather sweet. I snapped away as unobtrusively as I could.

Once they’d gone, and I’d seen Gemma, I carried on walking along the river. I saw a group of schoolboys with messenger bags walking along the sandy shore of the Thames near the Oxo Tower. I took photos of the Body Gossip flash mob and tried to read their messages of body love from afar. Looking at the photos later, I saw things that I expected people to like about themselves – eyes, hair, smile – and things that pleasantly surprised me – six-pack, height, jaw-line. It’s a worthwhile idea, and I hope more schools and employers join in with the next flash mob.

When I walked past them, I noticed something greenhouse and shed-like. A closer look told me what it was:

It’s a great project – just what London needs. There are separate sections for various plant families: potato, tomato, daisy, peas and carrots. From top to bottom there are flowers, vegetables and herbs. It’s joyful, beautiful and educational – the golden three!

The group that designed the Queen’s Walk Window Gardens is called Wayward Plants. It says the gardens are ‘large-scale allotments created from reclaimed windows’ and created by volunteers. It is part of the South Bank’s rather splendid Festival of Neighbourhood which runs until Sunday 8^th September.