The Potager Forager
‘Always leave room for the butterflies’, unless they’re cabbage whites
Cecil Beaton, ‘The Cutting Garden’, c.1960, oil on canvas. Garden Museum.
Nasturtiums conjure fond memories of gardening as a child; their trumpet flowers cutting a dash in orange, yellow and red amongst umbrella-like leaves, scampering over edges of brick paths and borders. Now, as part of the 1930’s house and garden restoration, I have earmarked a plot for a potager, where nasturtiums will grow alongside courgettes, and tumble over chimney pots dotted in amongst vegetables as a deterrent to the dog running amok, or the fox. My rough sketch includes rows of potatoes, onions, brassicas and runner beans trained up poles to display red flag flowers, interspersed with chives and alliums.
Nasturtiums might eventually be introduced to lure Cabbage Whites from laying eggs on kale or purple sprouting broccoli but it’s early days. Preliminary attempts to grow lettuces resulted in twelve small plants being transplanted from the shed windowsill to a raised bed, and covered over with chicken wire. One week later, after a heavy shower, the plot was decimated by snails, some of whom lingered. Apparently it’s been a year for it, which is not any consolation.
As for creating a cutting garden, a kaleidoscope of jewelled hues to lift the spirits, sweet peas were the earliest to scale a frame of hazel branches. I should have picked more of the flowers and put them in a vase for their perfume but they were too far from the house. Cosmos proved very obliging. It yielded drifts of pink and cream late into the year, then set into seed, encouraging me to branch out this spring and plant strawflowers. Despite being patient, no green shoots appeared. There must have been something about the conditions that they didn’t like. I’d envisioned gathering armfuls and hanging them from the beams in the garage to dry and use in floral arrangements with last year’s sedum and self-sown Honesty. During colder months I’d make the garage my studio. A place to fashion wild displays in vessels such as the Constance Spry earthenware vase discovered in a charity shop, or a watering can stumbled upon at the base of a sixty year old lime tree, in beneath its leaf canopy.
One wet Saturday morning, I took my cue from Ms Spry by curating a mix of weeds and shrub cuttings, from some rigorous pruning, to capture the spirit of the season. Her arrangement of brambles and hops in the window of a Bond St perfumier, was considered ground-breaking. My arrangement of alkanet, cow parsley, orange ball buddleia and weeping sedge in a cement vase, framed in the centre of the kitchen table, lacked scent but was a fun way to play at floristry whilst sheltering from downpours.
Alkanet and buddleia are the perfect colour combination! Slugs are marching through everything this year and it is proving very difficult to get anything going from seed without them being chopped off at their ankles. A lovely piece to read.