A walk through Hitch Wood near Hitchin which is noted for its Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta). A shimmering haze of blue/violet in the dappled light of spring sunshine.

 This section of the garden represents something like my ideal of a layered, successional woodland planting or more accurately edge of woodland. London gardens are often well suited to a woodland edge selection of plants. Invariably there is the shade of mature trees and surrounding buildings but also a good amount of sun for part of the day. 

 The meeting of open ground and forest (or glades within a forest) is a productive habitat in nature- the flora and fauna get something of the best of both worlds. So from the design point of view these are the plants to choose.

 Plants that like or tolerate shade tend to flower earlier in the year to take advantage of the light before the the tree canopy leafs up. Therefore late winter to early summer is the peak flowering period though there's plenty of greenery into autumn and a few plants that will flower deeper into summer.

 The trick is to select plants that come on as others fade start to fade. This is achieved by a mix of bulbs and perennials that clump or spread. Self-seeders -particularly biennials- fill any patches of bare soil. Climbers can be used to good effect if they have something to cling on to.

 By careful selection different species (often from different parts of the world) intermingle and co-exist. In a sense this mimics a natural ecosystem. Nature is sometimes perceived as chaotic. In fact nature is orderly on a colossal scale. It's possible to tune in to that natural order albeit on a smaller scale in a garden. 

 As bulbs go Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) doesn't seem to achieved much kudos. It grows wild in Eastern England but has been largely eradicated because it contains toxins which can affect grazing animals. Nor has it acquired any popularity among gardeners though it naturalises well in grass; perhaps it's deemed too untidy for carefully manicured lawns. 

 Needless to say I planted Star of Bethlehem in the garden and they do indeed shine like stars... 

 

 

 The banks of the Thames between Richmond and Twickenham are one of London's more bucolic locales. I walked along the north bank from Richmond Bridge to the riverfront at Twickenham. On the way I stopped for a pint at the White Swan which overlooks the river. 

 I went as far as the footbridge that leads onto Eel Pie Island then doubled back past the Swan to the foot ferry that crosses the river between Marble House and Ham House. Several generations of several families have operated a ferry here since 1908.  The crossing costs a pound- good value in this day and age!

 Disembarking on the south bank I cut through Petersham and across the meadows back to Richmond.

 

 The Thames from Richmond Hill was a recurring theme in the paintings of Turner. This stretch of the river still evokes an older England but some of the flora less so; perhaps that is appropriate since it was the Thames that connected London to the world. 

  I saw lots of Himalayan Balsam sprouting on the banks and the marshy thickets were carpeted with Three Cornered Leek. These Giant Echiums from the Canary Isles stood tall among a mass of Green Alkanet.

 I have noted before that the blue flowered Echium pininana is naturalising rapidly in London. The red flowered E. wildprettii is rarely seen but intriguingly seems to have hybridised here with pininana to produce a group of intermediate forms in hues of blue tinged with pink and pink tinged with blue...

 

 Solomon's Seal, a graceful plant of woodlands and shady gardens. This one is Polygonatum multiflorum but the common name Solomon's Seal seems to be used for a good many of the sixty or so species that occur across the Northern Hemisphere.

 The reference to Solomon is obscure with differing explanations. My plants were purchased from the catalogue of Shipton Bulbs who suggest that "It gained its curious name from the belief that the leaf scars on the rhizome resembled Hebrew characters". 

 I don't really grow Tulips. I suppose I think of them as too cultured, not 'wild' enough but they are certainly elegant. Some pop up every year on the allotment and these two stems I placed in a vase.

 In fact I do plant Tulipa sylvestris which grows wild in the UK- the only species to do so. And the Tulip meadows of Kazakhstan and the Tien Shan Mountains must be pretty wild!

Ferns unfurling.

 Here is treasure. I saw some tiny Toothworts yesterday. I think this is Common Toothwort (Lathraea squamaria) which is not very common. When I reached the edge of Wain's Wood [see last entry] I noticed a chap staring very intently at the base of a tree. I asked if he'd spotted something interesting and he drew my attention to several of these which he identified as Toothworts.

 L. squamaria is parasitic on the roots of trees, notably Hazel and Alder. It does not photosynthesise and therefore contains no chlorophyll. Wain's Wood is a Bluebell wood i.e. of ancient origins. The Toothwort was nestled among the ubiquitous Arums (A. maculatam) and also strands of Yellow Archangel (Lamium galeobdolen), another species that indicates the wood is ancient. Just the place for Toothworts to be hiding.

 Walking out of Hitchin towards the hills to the west there were plenty of wildflowers to be seen. They have been eliminated from the large arable fields hereabouts but the lanes and footpaths are repositories of flora. Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) was much in evidence.

 Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria hollostea) threads its way through shady hedge bottoms. It forms larger patches in spots that catch the sun.

 I was thinking only a few weeks ago that I've never seen Ramsons (Allium ursinum) around here. I assumed the free draining soils in this part of the world don't suit them. A friend happened to mention that she had seen them growing along a certain track and I went in search of them. 

 The track becomes a sunken lane that slopes down past a natural pond of stagnant water. Clearly a damper locale than the surrounding area and here the Ramsons are to be found. They look to be a day or two away from flowering.

 Note the presence of native Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) of which there were many weaving through the banks and hedges. In fact such boundaries are sometimes remnants of ancient woodlands. When the woods were cleared for agriculture field boundaries were defined by leaving strips of woodland rather than planting actual hedges.

 This may explain why the Bluebells are so prolific and account for this isolated pocket of Ramsons. The track is marked as a lane on the OS map, arguably a surviving "green lane" that was never made up into a road.   

 I walked back through Wain's Wood, well known locally as a Bluebell wood. They are early this year and stunning despite the rather dry winter we have had. Most of the woods in the area are abundant with Bluebells. I suspect the numerous colonies and outliers are survivals from pre-history when the whole territory would have been covered with trees and carpeted by Hyacinthoides non-scripta in spring.   

 

Bloomin' lovely in South London today.

 

Apple blossom time in the garden.

Lovely Lilac.

 

Hawthorn, the May Tree (flowering in April). 

 I will go in search of Wild Garlic aka Ramsons in the next week or two. Allium ursinum can be prolific in wet woods, damp hedgerows and shady stream banks. In fact they are not hard to grow in a garden as long as you have shade and a moist soil.  

 Failing that they grow well in containers, watering as needs be. The ones above for example I planted in a large square china sink (now invisible under the mass of greenery). They grow fine in big pots too. They are best planted as bulbs in autumn but need to be purchased when freshly lifted. They do not respond well to drying out during a period of storage. 

 A. ursinum lives up to the name of Wild Garlic. I know a valley in Dorset where they are plentiful and pungent; the whole valley reeks in late spring/early summer! Foragers seek out Ramsons and that is something of a mixed blessing. 

 There is no harm in picking a few leaves for personal use where they grow in quantity. Unfortunately I read reports of "professional" foragers stripping swathes of them to sell to the restaurant trade, farmer's markets etc. 

 As I say A. ursinum is an easy enough species to cultivate and I would suggest that is the way to go if someone wishes to make money by treating it as a commodity.

 

 Arum maculatam must be one of our most common wildflowers. It can be found in shady spots across the land in great profusion. But the flower when it appears is easy to miss among the mass of glossy arrow shaped leaves. First a tall spathe appears (a bract forming a sheath)...

 ... which unfurls to reveal a spadix, the spike-like inflorescence.

 A. maculatum is a species with many common names. Some are merely functional (e.g. Arum Lilly) but reference to genitalia and sex seems to be a common theme! Cuckoo Pint for example probably derives from the old English word pintle meaning penis. Lords and Ladies was also intended to be suggestive I imagine. The lore of plants has its place in the pagan soul. 

 A trip to the allotment, the first for several weeks. I took a Sedum and a Hosta that someone had kindly left in the surplus box.

 White Comfrey and Raspberry canes.

 Rhubarb Rhubarb

 Symphytum ibericum in full flower and attracting bees.

 Red Campion and Wild Tulip in the wildflower bed. 

 The perennial bed: Sage, Fennel, Chives, Babbington's Leek, Lovage, Lemon Balm et al.

  Red Deadnettle doing well in this wheelbarrow with no wheel.

 I prepared this bed to sow with various flowery edibles: Chicory, Cornflower, Black Caraway, Pot Marigold, Wild Rocket. Borage already self-seeds here.

 Warm and sunny today. Sleepy honey bees were emerging from one of the hives at Edible Landscapes in Finsbury Park.

 Like many houses in England the house I grew up in has a Privet hedge in the front garden. Among the greenery are the bright red flowers of a Flowering Quince. Not to be confused with Quince Tree this is the shrubby Japanese Quince (Chaenomeles spp.) possibly the cultivar C. x superba 'Crimson and Gold'.

 On the other side of the hedge the view is a bit more 'street'.

 Japanese Quince grows fine as a freestanding shrub but is very amenable to being used as a hedging plant. The hedge has been here well over half a century and the Quince with it; I wonder whether they were planted together or separately? I give the hedge a trim once or twice a year but other than that no maintenance is required.

 Postscript My father notes that he planted the front section of the hedge in the late sixties. He bought a dozen or so bare root plants from a market gardener who had a plot of land not far from the house (now a housing estate needless to say). The side section he planted in the seventies using stems from my grandmother's garden.

 The Quince was already there when my parents moved in so who knows how old it is. It merged with the Privet over time and they continue to co-exist. 

 

 Like most gardeners I have my successes and failures. I had chalked up my attempt to establish Snake's Head Fritillary as a failure. This is a species which is extremely rare in the wild where it requires a very specific habitat: a free draining soil which floods in winter. 

 Some years ago I planted fifty bulbs of Fritillaria meleagris and they amounted to nothing. A back garden in South London clearly failed to approximate their natural habitat- or so I thought. Today I noticed a couple have survived and seem to be doing alright. So I'll persist and buy another ten or twenty in the autumn to see if more will grow in the same spot.

 By way of a contrast tens of thousands grow in the water meadows of Magdalen College, Oxford [see entry dated 17th. April 2017]. Surely one of the greatest sights in all England...

 

 Honesty (Lunaria annua) has purple flowers but there is also the striking white flowered form which needless to say is known as White Honesty (L. annua var. alba). As I mentioned recently both self-seed around the garden though for some reason White Honesty seems to be the more vigorous of the two in this setting. That is curious because they are one and the same species but the purple is more common, in fact I hardly ever see White Honesty. 

 I'm referring to them as different forms but strictly speaking var. alba indicates that it is considered a variety i.e. below the taxonomic rank of species and subspecies but above the rank of form. Then again the white flowered Foxglove is Digitalis purpurea f. alba. Why is White Honesty a variety and White Foxglove a form??