Opening on May 30, 2023, at the Palace of Versailles, will be a new “Perfumer’s Garden”, sponsored by the high-end perfume house Maison Francis Kurkdjian. One of my favorite fragrance blogs, “Now Smell This”, shared this video:
I can’t wait to go see it! Maybe next summer, when we are planning a family trip to France.
Here we are in mid-August, and between my two-week absence to visit my dear father-in-law in New England and the plentiful rain and heat, the weeds are running rampant in my garden. However, the same conditions mean the several coneflowers I added to a flowerbed this spring and summer are also flourishing, and this weekend I spotted a pair of goldfinches among them, feeding on the seeds! Although I’ve had a few coneflowers in the same bed for a while, I’ve never seen goldfinches visiting, so this was a real treat.
Like many bird-lovers, I took down feeders this spring at the advice of various organizations, because of the current outbreak of avian flu that is having a particularly bad impact on wild birds. The more they are encouraged to congregate (like at a feeder), the easier it is for them to become infected. I’ve missed the colorful presence of the usual cardinals, wrens, and others, so you can imagine my delight when a goldfinch couple appeared: the vividly yellow male, and the yellowish brown female. I hope they stay around!
I’ve been planting more and more flowers and other plants that appeal to birds and pollinators. They are also beautiful — the bed where I’ve added coneflowers has a soft sunset/twilight color scheme, because it catches the late afternoon sun, and coneflowers now come in many pretty shades of pink, coral, purple, etc. that blend beautifully with the daylilies I have there. The ruby-colored monarda I planted years ago seems to have come into its own this year, and is spreading nicely; it has been visited regularly by hummingbirds and butterflies, who also appreciated the flowering vines I had in my vegetable garden last summer. (I planted fewer this year, because last summer’s bean vines took over the whole bed!). Our small back yard already has many bird-and-bug-friendly features, like plenty of tree cover and areas where leaf litter is undisturbed. Sadly, though, we no longer see fireflies in the back of our garden as we used to. I blame the ubiquitous mosquito-spraying in our area.
We drove up almost the entire Eastern seaboard to visit my FIL in New Hampshire, and the whole way up and back, I couldn’t help wondering WHY so few interstates include plantings of native wildflowers, in spite of the Federal Highway Administration’s wildflower programs. I saw hundreds of miles of grass along the sides and up the middle of highways. Imagine if more, even most, of those miles were planted with native milkweeds and other highway-tolerant wildflowers for the endangered monarch butterflies and other pollinators! I know there is a partnership among several states to plant monarch-friendly flowers along the “Monarch Highway”, Interstate 35 — I wish there was a similar partnership along Interstates 95 and 85. If there is one, I didn’t see any evidence of it, though I appreciate the wildflower plantings on Interstate 16, the highway that leads to the coast.
Does your area actively cultivate wildflowers along public rights of way?
A timely piece by Anne Wareham, about the hellebores that are starting to bloom.
We probably all love hellebores, but some people seem to like them leafy and some people like them naked. And sometimes the plants themselves seem to come kind of in-between. Aren’t they glorious? So why de-leaf? The biggest reason may be Leaf Spot. I really know nothing about this – we may have it, or…
Hellebores – to leave or unleaf? — GardenRant
– Guest post by Rose Strang. Firstly, thanks Neil for hosting this interview on your excellent blog! Let me introduce myself – I’m an artist by profession and an occasional perfume reviewer for L.L.M. Edinburgh. Last month I interviewed Imogen Russon Taylor, owner and founder of Scotland’s first perfume house, Kingdom Scotland. Since L.L.M. isn’t […]
Interview with Imogen Russon Taylor, founder and owner of Kingdom Scotland — The Black Narcissus
From one of my favorite blogs, The Black Narcissus! This fascinating interview unites many of my ongoing interests: plants, botany, history, fragrance, and even a favorite country, Scotland. Enjoy!
P.S. The interview was done by artist Rose Strang, whose gorgeous paintings you may see here: Rose Strang Artworks.
Doesn’t this look and sound delicious? It is a fragrant salad devised by perfumer Ezra Woods, whose brand is “Regime des Fleurs.” The recipe is in this article from the NY Times’ “T” Magazine: A Perfumer’s Fragrant Flower Salad.
PSA: St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall is looking for a new gardener. Would that I were qualified! I’ve visited with my family and it is so beautiful.
Blogger Allen Bush has just published a fascinating exchange (“Time to ‘Rethink Pretty’ in the Garden”) he had with Benjamin Vogt, prairie garden designer, activist, and author of the book “A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future.” That book is now on my reading list!
I have been shrinking the size of my already small front and back lawns steadily over the years, although I’ve been doing that by expanding traditional flowerbeds, adding wildflowers, and creating small groves of understory trees that include native dogwoods. I do still love and plant non-natives, but I try also to plant consciously to attract and support birds, pollinators, butterflies. I inherited a garden full of old, well-established azaleas and have left them, but have started underplanting them with plants like pink evening primrose and native ferns, and adding native azaleas to their numbers. I am fortunate in that I live in an historic neighborhood where every house and garden looks different, and creative gardens are prized. I can think of more than one home where Benjamin’s prairie garden would fit right in!
I live in a Southeastern state that is not particularly progressive, but one thing it does very well is to use roadside plantings to cultivate meadow-like swathes of native wildflowers. I appreciate both the beauty and the effort.
Having enjoyed several visits in recent years to Kew, I recently bought a book called “The Plant Hunters”, by Musgrave, Gardner and Musgrave. (There are several books with that title). It is the story of several of the most legendary botanical explorers, who brought back exotic plants previously unknown in Europe and England, including many that I saw this summer in The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Fascinating!
Hundreds of thousands of us enjoy gardening and visiting famous parks and gardens. Yet few of us, as we admire the beautiful and diverse range of plants around us, stop to wonder where they come from, and fewer still think about how these plants came to be here in the first place.
How many of us, for example, know that the explorer who found over 300 rhododendron species was one of two survivors of a party attacked in a rebellious uprising and had an escape worthy of a member of the Special Forces; that the man responsible for establishing the tea industry in India single-handedly fought a gun battle with pirates while running a high fever; that the plant hunter who introduced many conifers to our landscape was gored to death by a bull; or that the discovery of the Himalayan rhododendrons resulted in a kingdom being annexed into the British Empire?
While I was in the UK with my family, I tried for the first time the most divine drink: Fentimans Rose Lemonade. It is delicious on its own — it really smells like roses and tastes the way roses smell! And it’s pink! Just lovely.
When we got home, I found a local store that carries it. Hurray! Bought two large bottles and promptly started to think, what else can I do with this yummy beverage? Aha — a summer cocktail! So I made one up. I am posting the recipe on my “Old Herbaceous” blog because Fentimans refers to its Rose Lemonade as “botanically brewed” and describes its composition as “fermented botanical lemon drink with herbal extracts”; and because the cocktail is based on Hendrick’s Gin, a small-batch Scottish gin infused with rose and cucumber extracts, plus other botanicals: “Hendrick’s wondrous botanical signature consists of flowers, roots, fruits, and seeds from the world over. They function to complement and set the stage for our delicious duet of infusions: rose petal and cucumber.”
So here is the recipe for what my daughter calls “Rosie the Riveter”, although I’m trying to think of a more romantic, ladylike name to match the pale pink color with light green accents; and there is already a different cocktail named Rosie the Riveter, which I only discovered after I came up with mine and Googled the name. Maybe I’ll call it “Scepter’d Isle”, after Shakespeare and the gorgeous David Austin English Rose of that name, inspired by Susan Rushton’s beautiful photographs! What do you think?
Old Herbaceous’ Rosie the Riveter Cocktail (or Scepter’d Isle):
Fill a tall glass halfway with ice (cubes or crushed).
Add one jigger of Hendrick’s Gin.
Fill the rest of the glass with Fentimans Rose Lemonade.
Add five drops of rose water, 1-3 thin slices of cucumber, one sprig of fresh mint leaves.
Enjoy!
Next stop: the bar “Fragrances” at the Ritz-Carlton, Berlin, which serves cocktails inspired by legendary perfumes. I’ve never been there, have you?
I spent the whole month of May posting about lily of the valley-based fragrances on my other blog, Serenity Now, in a series I called “May Muguet Marathon.” While I was doing that and reading a lot online about lilies of the valley, I came across a variety I have long wanted to try in my own garden, Convallaria majalis “Bordeaux.” It was on sale, so of course I bought 40 pips! My teenaged son helped me create a new planting bed for them by spreading many cubic feet of mushroom compost on top of the clayish soil between several old azaleas and the base of our house’s front terrace, a partly shaded area that is well-watered by our in-ground sprinkler system. He turned it in for me; I hope this will provide a suitable habitat! Lilies of the valley do not become invasive here in the South as they do further north; in fact, sometimes they struggle. Fingers crossed that “Bordeaux” finds a happy home here!
I also bought some pips of Convallaria majalis “Prolificans”, which many sellers describe as “double-flowered”, but it is not a true double flower, as can be seen in this photo:
Rather, it has clusters of tiny, single flowers that dangle together from the main stalk, creating the look of double flowers. The true double-flowered lily of the valley is “Flore Pleno”:
I hope my new lilies of the valley find themselves happy in their new home and spread profusely! I would welcome what plant-hunter Reginald Farrer described as “the worst of all delicious weeds when it thrives.”
Old Herbaceous 