This winter I'm hosting a Wintertime garden design book club. The first book we're covering is In Your Garden by Vita Sackville-West.
I love the back stories of how plants came into cultivation. Sackville-West is a master storyteller. I decided to share this week's book club post with the Garden Moxie newsletter community.
I hope you enjoy it!
The Hardy Carnation
In an article written on February 5, 1950, Sackville-West provides the back story of the Chabaud carnation:
"The hardy carnation has long been popular, and with the introduction of the Chabaud carnation its popularity has increased. M. Chabaud was a botanist from Toulon who, in about 1870, raised this hybrid between the old perennial carnation and the annual kind. The seeds of the original Chabaud carnation are now on sale in this country, and certainly ought to be grown by every gardener who has half-a-dozen seed boxes to spare."
Sackville-West goes on to provide more historical context saying that:
"Those gardeners who appreciate a touch of historical tradition will be gratified to know that in the variety called Flamand they are getting a seventeeth-century strain and may expect the flaked and mottled flower so often seen in those enchanting muddles crammed into an urn in Dutch flower-paintings."
I couldn't find a variety called Flamand, but I think she was referring to the dianthus seen in those old paintings where every bloom and insect holds a secret meaning.
She then gets completely carried away (and I love every minute):
"Indeed, the catalogue of these seeds is full of romance, not only historical but geographical, if you agree with me that there is something romantic in the thought of Provence, from which your seeds come. Have you been to St. Remy, that Roman settlement in what was once south-eastern Gaul, where a Roman triumphal arch still stands, and where flowers are now grown in the mile-wide stretches for the seed market? It must be a wonderful sight, when all the carnations and zinnias and petunias are in flower, staining the bistred landscape of Van Gogh's Provence in acres of color."
Those three sentences led me on a two hour-long adventure looking up Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Van Gogh's life in Provence, and the meaning of the word "bistred" (which I linked to in case you don't know its meaning either).
In this article from July 24, 1949, Sackville-West writes about the awkward period between June and September.
"There comes an awkward moment between June and September. Unless we go in for herbaceous borders, for which few of us can now afford the space or the time, if indeed we still had the taste for them, the garden is apt to go blank and green and colorless in these months of high summer. Annuals are our best hope, but annuals mean a good deal of trouble, especially in a dry season."
She goes on to recommend plants that provide relief. I've listed a few of the plants below.
Ceanothus x delileanus 'Gloire de Versailles'
Ceanothus delileanus 'Gloire de Versailles' image from Annie's Annuals
You can purchase this plant at Romence Garden. The variety shown in the photo is 'Dark Night'.
Low growing shrub with electric blue blooms and silvery-grey, fragrant foliage
Grows in full sun
Hardiness zones: 5-9
Grows 14 inches tall and 14 inches wide
Blooms in summer to fall
Deer resistant and pollinator friendly
An Inspirational Writing Style
I'm captivated by Sackville-West's ability to weave poetic descriptions into her articles. How rare its become to read good writing when we spend our time on social media.
Just read this passage describing an experiment she tried:
"Two years ago I had what I thought might be a bright idea. It has turned out so bright, in both senses of the word, that I must pass it on. I had two small windswept beds (the size was eight yards long by five yards wide each), divided by a path of paving stones down the middle. I tried every sort of thing in them, including a mad venture of hollyhocks, which, of course, got flattened by the prevailing south-west wind, however strongly we staked them. So I then decided I must have something very low growing, which would not suffer from the wind, and scrapped the hollyhocks, and dibbled in lots and lots of thyme, and now have a sort of lawn which, while it is densely flowering in purple and red, looks like a Persian carpet laid flat on the ground out of doors. The bees think that I have laid it for their especial benefit. It really is a lovely sight; I do not want to boast, but I cannot help being pleased with it; it is seldom that one's experiments in gardening are wholly successful."
I feel like I need to take a writing course after reading this book. I hope you feel the same.
Thanks so much for being here.
Happy Gardening, Sue
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