What an incredible day our April open gardens day was. Unprecedented numbers of you turned out to support us to make it the biggest and busiest open day we have ever had. Thank you so much to the thousands of you who came and made the day such a huge success raising much needed funds for St. Elizabeth Hospice.
Nothing can diminish the beauty of May. The late tulips are sumptuous, the apple blossom is at its most bountiful, the bluebells in the woodland and under our big oak tree are fully on song so too are cowslips, forget-me-nots and camassias. And above all the intensity of new leaves on all the hedges and trees is breathtaking. For a few weeks this garden is elevated by morning dew and cow parsley, apple and hawthorn blossom (such a lovely word) and the dawn chorus. The garden here is better than anything else this world has to offer.
For me nothing celebrates the month of May more than cow cow parsley. There is nothing in this world so beautiful and it steals my heart every year. It is technically a weed but here at Columbine we encourage it as much as possible. It is fine growing as a single plant but nothing can compete with it en-masse. The soft, clouds of white sitting on tall feathery foliage multiplied a thousand times. It is an umbellifer, member of the carrot family and a brilliant thing to have as they attract a range of beneficial insects such as hoverflies and ladybirds into the garden. There is a cultivated variety Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ that we grow here with purple leaves and brown stems beneath the white, lacy flowers. It cross-pollinates with wild cow parsley which means that the offspring quickly loses the intensity of purple leaves, so if its purpleness is the main attraction for you then do what we do and keep it well away from its wild cousin. I confess I don’t mind as I’m obsessed with cow parsley in all its forms. It couldn’t be more welcome here.
Monty Don sums May up perfectly for me in his diary entry in The Ivington Diaries which was published in 2009.
“23rd May 2003
When I die I shall go to May. It will be green. Not environmentally correct, for things will just be, without measurement or judgement, but actually the colour green in all its thousand shining faces. Every day will feel like Christmas Eve when I was ten. Every green leaf will be perfection exactly as it is and yet will grow and change every time I turn my eyes to it. Every moment will be like the arc of a diver breaking the waters of a green lake. I know this because this is what May is like here and now. Almost unbearable really. It does not hold for half and hour. Yet in the shifting, growing hymn of light and colour and leaf is the still simple reason that I garden”.
