GODS AND GREEN FINGERS
An Anthology for Plant Lovers
by Linda Talbot
Illustrations and photographs by Linda Talbot
Copyright Linda Talbot 2014
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Table of Contents
Introduction
wild iris
[short story] - The Maze
hellebore
[short story] - The Peacock's Eye
poppies on Crete
[short story] - The Intruder
heliotrope
crocus
myrtle
hyacinth
lotus
anemone
[short story] - The Windflower
narcissus
lily
[short story] - White Lilies
exotic eccentrics
More Bizarre Beauties
cockscomb
Curiosities to Cultivate – Succulents
Climbers
morning glory
[short story] - The Hanging Gardens of Nalybob
Trees
[short story] - Olive
Gardens of Quartz and Gold
The Quartz Garden
The Golden Garden
The Rock Garden
The Basalt Garden
The Conglomerate Garden
A Palette of Plants
Rose Window in Chartres
Author’s thanks, contact blog and short note
Introduction
I have long loved growing plants, from Californian poppies that recklessly colonised a border in an East London garden to Oriental lilies nurtured for their fragrant transience in pots.
I discovered that often plants one expected to proliferate, did not appear, while others considered difficult, flourished. I began to write about plants for a local paper after moving to Crete, where I have also enjoyed growing Mediterranean species that would have died in northern Europe.
In Greece, the gods look over one’s shoulder. They have close associations with the plants grown in gardens and which flourish in the wild.
Headstrong gods, mere mortals, the brief beauty of flowers; this heady combination has defied time and is still a riveting read.
Women turned, with immortal help, into foliage and flowers. Young men were accidentally slain and blooms, now commonplace, sprang from their blood. And in ritual and finely wrought artefacts, flowers were revered for reasons we may never fully understand. In this book I recall the myths these plants inspired with hints on how to grow them in your garden. As they unfold you may recall the fantasy they fostered when man had closer links with the natural world. So I have selected plants, from the commonplace to the curious, pursued their mythical past and given tips on how to help them flourish.
And I suggest how to plan a garden that reflects a painter’s palette and another based on minerals and rocks.
And I include short stories inspired by plants and gardens.
“A garden is a lovesome thing….” some poet said. But a garden may be rife with surprises, not to mention danger…plants may heal, poison and fire the imagination and will probably be around when we are long gone. So don’t take your garden for granted!
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“The awkward flay-leafed flag flower or the iris……” So ran the first line of a poem I once wrote while watching irises prance in the wind by the pond in our Suffolk garden. Even then I was drawn to their fluttering fragility.
Iris was the messenger of the gods and the flower was named after her. She led the souls of the dead along a rainbow whose colours reflected her iridescence. Iris ran fast, when she was not soaring on golden wings. Zeus took advantage of her alacrity.
When the gods on Olympus quarrelled or lied, he sent Iris to fetch water from the dark River Styx in a golden goblet. If a god told a lie by this water he was struck unconscious for a year. And after that he suffered more mysterious and no doubt pernicious punishment. For ten years he could not serve on godly councils or even join in celebrations with their amiably erring traits of humanity.
And Iris was sent to fetch Demeter who had turned the flourishing earth to dust as she mourned for her daughter Persephone, abducted by Hades and hidden in the Underworld. Iris went to Eleusis and found black-clad Demeter in the temple. But she refused to leave. So even the persuasive powers of a gods’ messenger were not guaranteed.
Iris florentina - large, white-flowered and sweet smelling, inspired the Fleur-de-lis, the French heraldic symbol and is found on rocks in the Mediterranean, while the Yellow Iris (iris pseudocorus) thrives in swampy earth in the Greek mountains.
There are at least five kinds you can grow in your garden. Their needs are surprisingly diverse and those that do not need watering, ideal for a dry climate. Most irises emerge from rhizomes - long, horizontal underground stems with a bud at one end.
Iris japonica - the Crested or Orchid Iris - originally from China and Japan, is one of the loveliest; pale lavender with gold markings, its petals are gently frayed. Plant it in a light but not too sunny place in moist and well-aerated soil, rich in organic material. Water well and remove dry leaves and floral stems in autumn. You can then divide the rhizomes but do not plant them too deeply.
The iris germanica or German Iris, often known as “bearded” because of yellow hairs along central veins, is one of the most versatile. This herbaceous perennial has a large creeping, branched rhizome; an aerial shoot that is foliar and floral at the end of each branch.
This is a cultivated hybrid and probably originated in the eastern Mediterranean. It likes sun and will grow in any soil so long as it is not waterlogged. There is usually no need to water. If it looks poorly, a little bonemeal should suffice.
Colours range from white and mauve to a deep yellow with frilly leaves, another has a yellow flower with the striking contrast of reddish lower petals.
Iris lutescens from south western Europe, has deep purple to sky blue flowers with yellowish marks inside and should be treated like the German iris. The Algerian iris (iris unguicularis), from the Mediterranean region of Africa, is particularly beautiful with lilac petals and handsome, feather-like markings. This plant is happy in sun or shade, needs no watering and likes to be left alone. The Spanish iris (iris xiphium) is another good looker with lilac petals streaked at the base with yellow. It loves sun, plenty of manure dug in the ground before planting and ample water. This plant has bulblets, but it is best to buy fresh bulbs.
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Seen from above, the solution of the maze seems simple. High laurel hedges are clipped to reveal narrow dust paths, dead ends and a clear cut way to reach the empty grass circle in the centre. But that is from above.
Who devised this dubious means of fun, providing diversion in so many great gardens? For, once inside, the hedges soar and enclose, creating chronic claustrophobia and a disorientating sense of being severed from reality.
The maze lies in the grounds of an anciently mellow house owned by a
wealthy eccentric who has mischievously enlarged the original maze, so one of his four gardeners is constantly extricating lost visitors.
In the empty central circle had stood an elegantly poised statue of Adonis. But some louts had covered his classic body with graffiti and he had been removed for cleaning. Sadly, the inferior material from which he was made, used to cut the cost of the commission, had crumbled and he had been whisked away with the following week’s rubbish.
The eccentric owner had strode restlessly through the maze and, addled by its madness, had proclaimed, “A young man resembling Adonis will enter the maze, be enchanted and transformed into that epitome of proportion and grace!” The gardeners, who were constantly searching for their master in the maze, smiled sadly and shook their heads.
“Come on - it’ll be fun!” Bryan urges Penny, his diffident partner. She views the opening in the ominous hedge, admitting the unwary.
“It isn’t far to the middle - I’ll beat you to it!” And Bryan has gone - a shiver of white dust rising in his wake.
“Hey - wait!” Penny enters and follows the path he took. But he has vanished. She treads cautiously between the high hedges, their lush upper leaves shining in the sun, those below, sinister in shadow.
Silence. Is there anyone else in the maze? The leaves do not stir. Penny looks longingly at the patch of blue sky above. She stumbles in her tight shoes. The path terminates abruptly. A dead end.
“Bryan!” she cries. Her voice is thrown mockingly back. She turns to retrace her steps and sees another path to the right. She hurries, hoping this one leads to the centre. But it too stops at a dead end. Impatiently she punches the thick leaves, barely stirring them with her hot hands. Her summer dress clings unpleasantly. Despite the shade she is sweating and scrapes back the straying fair hair from her face.
Again, she retraces her steps and swerves, panicky now, down another path to the left. Is it her imagination, or is this path more narrow than the last? She gasps - exasperated on reaching yet another cul-de-sac. She kicks off the tight shoes, leaving them overturned in the dust.
“Bryan!” She yells again. Nothing. No other people - either lost or able to show her the way out. No breath of a breeze. The laurel leaves might have solidified; broodingly verdant jailers without keys.
The horror of when, as a child, she was locked in the garden shed by her father, descends on her like lead. She had harshly suppressed the memory of those moments that turned into hours before she was released, numb and uncomprehending.
Now the clustering leaves might be silently assessing her. She imagines they conceal eyes as cold as her father’s, refusing to forgive her reluctance to fulfil HIS ambition. He had wanted to write but had been forced into a salesman’s job to help support his parents.
So he had inundated Penny with books, pen and paper. Looking at the blank sheets, she had frozen, unable to produce a word. When she had met Bryan her father had urged her not to get involved - a writer’s life was single-minded. He cursed the handsome young man. But she had run away and now, living with Bryan, she has banished books - and potted plants - from the house.
She tries one rough path after another. All lead to dead ends. The sun moves slowly westwards and a chill wind ripples the laurel leaves. Penny sinks to her knees, head in hands.
“Please, daddy, let me out!” she hears the voice of a child pleading. Shocked, she struggles to collect herself, but she is shaking and starts to sob. She had not wanted to visit the gardens with their burgeoning plants and, on the edge of immaculate lawns, garden sheds, whose shadowy interiors she dared not contemplate.
The sun is setting. A lurid light lies for a while on top of the hedge, then slowly dims. A chill wind whispers like a querulous interloper through the heavy leaves. Penny takes another path, the white dust darkening, the inevitable dead end barely perceptible. She wanders aimlessly now, bumping against the immutable hedge, hearing a malicious murmur in the wind.
“Bryan!” she moans. She lives again the cloistered hours in the garden shed; waiting to be released, given supper but not forgiven for failing to comply with her father’s wishes. But this time, no key turns in the rusty lock, no gruff voice orders her back into a an unwelcoming world.
The wind drops. Silence. Then the pale moonlight spills coldly on the hedge top. Penny sinks against the leaves. Her eyes close as they did, as a despairing means of escape, in the garden shed. She falls into a half sleep, probed by invisibly audacious fingers.
She wakes as light filters through the hedge top to find she has fallen into the laurel and the leaves are prodding her. Panicking, she finds her feet and stumbles down one more path that leads purposefully towards the centre.
Subtly it curves. Penny hardly dares look round the corner, unable to face another dead end. But there is the clearing; the circle of well tended grass lit by tentative rays of early sun. And in the centre stands Bryan, head high, hand on hip; every inch the Greek hero of unlikely legend.
“Bryan!” Penny rushes to him, trips and grazes a leg against his foot. He might be made of stone. Horrified, she grasps one of his hands. She feels cold flesh but, looking up, sees a face frozen with the blind eyes of manipulated marble.
Penny runs frantic fingers over his skin that looks like stone, yet retains the vulnerability of flesh. Above his sightless eyes, Bryan’s mouth is a sealed and finely chiselled line. She recalls her father’s curse.
And that is how a gardener finds them - Penny clinging in frustration and fatigue to the unresponding man who had rushed so blithely into the mad enchantment of the maze.
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The most striking White Hellebores were said to grow on Mount Oeta, where Heracles decided to end it all on a funeral pyre. He had pushed his luck by taking a mistress while married to Deianeira. No longer young, she sought the centaur Nessus, hearing he had a love charm that might focus her husband’s roving eye on her.
There are several versions of her encounter with Nessus, including one in which she spreads the shirt woven for Heracles’ return, with the mysterious mixture Nessus had given her. She was alarmed to see the remains of the wool she had used for this, burn and bubble with red foam when she threw it away. Had Nessus deceived her?
Heracles put on the shirt and was instantly racked with pain. The mixture may have had poison from the Hydra which flowed in Nessus’ blood and spread over Heracles’ limbs. He tried ripping off the shirt but it clung and his flesh came away with it. In despair he ordered the building of a pyre of oak and wild olive. As he died, thunderbolts fell and demolished the pyre. The hellebores were no doubt smoke-smothered witnesses.
This plant - thought to cure insanity - recurs in relation to Apollo’s priest Melampes, who objected to women following the cult of Dionysus. So he gave them milk from a goat which had eaten helleborus cyclophyllus and they sobered up. With hellebore, delegates from Delphi, devoted to sustaining a cult and its temples, poisoned the water of Pleistus. And the town of Krissa in Phocis which contended with Delphi for Apollo’s favours, surrendered after a siege of ten years.
Helleborus cyclophyllus is a robust perennial with leafy heads of a few large open green flowers and conspicuous hand-shaped leaves. It is found in woods and bushy places in the hills and mountains of Greece. But the Stinking Hellebore, or Bears-Foot (helleborus foetidus), is a British native, that has spread to countries from Italy to Spain. It stinks when bruised.
The Christmas Rose (helleborus niger) is a beautiful variant and easy to grow. This is a bushy evergreen perennial with a fine white flower appearing as the name suggests, in winter. A native of southern Europe, it likes shade and is happy in a shrubbery or among trees.
It likes chalk rich, even clayey soil with humus and an occasional dressing of manure. It resents being disturbed and likes water but can survive dryness. In the autumn remove dead flowers and any dead or yellowing growth. You can propagate by clump division in autumn or spring.
Equally lovely is the Len
ten Rose (helleborus orientalis). This comes in various colours including a subdued and finely speckled lilac and it flowers in late winter and early spring.
Originating in Greece and Asia Minor, this hellebore likes to grow in shade in a limey or clayey sandy soil with moist humus. It appreciates a periodic dressing of manure and dislikes disturbance. Water regularly and remove dry growth while it rests. Propagate by clump division after flowering in the spring.
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The garden glows; a bid by a desert dweller for paradise on Earth. Its four beds burgeon with rare flowers. Its white walks leap with sunlight and at the end of one, a fountain flows into a placid pool.
Not a leaf stirs. The garden, flowering around a great house on an arid plain, might be breathless under a spell.
Then, from the house, steps a middle aged man in a purple robe trimmed with gold and behind him, his guest - a woman in a modest white shift and a Persian rose in her hair.
They walk along a blatant white path and choose a seat of rose marble. They sit in amiable silence. Then the man says, “I owe much to your father, Lisane. He helped me build my business empire. You must tell me if you need help in any way.”
The woman smiles. “I’m content. Although I’d like to meet your nephew.” She has seen him passing through the house and was struck by his stature and good looks.
“Of course you shall,” promises her host. And that evening as the exotic flowers gently close, they meet. He is polite but distant, his mind elsewhere.
The next day Lisane sees the peacock. He struts - the epitome of male vanity; his magnificent tail spread in egocentric splendour. He pauses before her, his canny eye assessing this female, dressed today more richly in a yellow, loose-sleeved gown with fine embroidery. She hopes to impress the indifferent nephew.
The peacock turns, quivering his audacious tail and struts away, along the pristine path to the fountain.