As you may know from reading my blogs and seeing my social media posts that I adore cow parsley – the most beautiful plant that steals my heart every May with its wonderful clouds of white flowers. To keep that fabulous froth going in the garden I have just sown some Daucus carota or wild carrot seed in modules. It’s another umbellifer that flowers gloriously. It’s where the original carrot has been bred from – although its long tapering root is much slimmer than the garden carrot and the orange colour was only bred into it in the seventeenth century – the wild carrot is naturally white or purple. Daucus flowers are essentially white but touched with pink with often a single pink flower at the centre. It starts out as a distinct umbel and then as the flowers fade and turn to seed, it slowly inverts so that the seedhead ends up looking like a bird’s nest. Wonderful. This is the true Queen Anne’s Lace – despite cow parsley often being called that. The name is said to come from the central pink dot of flower that represents a drop of blood after Queen Anne pricked her finger. I’m going to add the plugs to our wildflower meadow in the autumn where it will hopefully spread and I’ll also add a few to our new walled garden.
Having a moat means we get lots of damselflies and dragonflies. I could watch them for hours zipping across the surface of the water adding a jewel-like lustre to the garden. A dragonfly female lays her eggs on a plant in water or even directly in the water itself and the eggs hatch into nymphs that look like beetles that scuttle in the water where they can remain for up to four years. Then when fully mature it waits for warmer weather before crawling up a plant, shedding its skin to reveal the dragonfly lurking within. Magical. Apparently it can take up to two days for the iridescence of its wings to fully emerge and then it hunts for food frantically for two months before dying. I learnt all this from watching an episode of Countryfile the other evening. So what we see here is a speeded up culmination of a life spent mostly under water getting ready to shine for their bright, brief time in the sun.
Just a reminder that I am giving a special talk here in our 18th century barn on the evening of Friday July 31st. In a very personal account I shall be sharing how we have created the gardens here from scratch and the part I have played in its development over the past 29 years and my love of Columbine and gardening. You can book tickets by clicking on the link on our homepage.
Kate Elliott came to Columbine Hall in 1997 when she was sixteen. She is now head gardener but also helps with managing the property generally and in conducting guided tours.