Nettle is the new black, but burgundy is better
The plants formerly known as weeds - batting for burgundy - cool beans
Batting for Burgundy
We’re not supposed to have favourites, even less so favourite colours, but if we did I’d bat for burgundy. It has without doubt been the MVP in my garden this year, adding a welcome hit of sultry drama to almost any situation. There’s not a colour combo she doesn’t get along with – grown up and sophisticated with whites, blues and limes, tres chic with a swirl of apricot, rowdy and raucous with hot pink and orange, or as in my garden repeated every which way I can imagine with lemony yellow for a surprising and very pleasing pucker. To ensure you’re never without a good glug of claret, here are my fave burgundy-blooms for all seasons.
Spring / early summer:
Tulipa ‘Havran’ – an embarrassment of riches on the burgundy tulip front but this is a classic, with a very elegant fluted shape, which I love with T. Spring green
Astrantia major ‘Hadspen Blood’ - extremely lovely Astrantia, with particularly deep maroon blooms with a lovely soft, slightly nodding habit. A bit hard to get hold of, A. major ‘Burguny Manor’ a good sub.
Summer:
Knautia macedonica: A very good do-er as they say. Masses of dark scabious flowers on almost invisible wiry stems. Very generous, it gets huge and self-seeds (both very valuable attributes in my book), and flowers for months. Very little not to like.
Alcea rosea ‘Nigra’: everyone loves a Hollyhock, and when as dark and delicious as this, she sheds her twee cottagey innocence and becomes an altogether different beast that would look as fab in a smart London garden as she would swaying against a tin shack. A. Crème de Cassis an excellent alternative if you like a raspberry ripple swirl.
Persicara amplexicaulis ‘Blackfield’: I’m a committed member of team Persicaria, and this is a winner. Excellent colour, relatively tall, flowers forever and foliage great ground cover earlier in the season.
Gladiolus ‘Black Sea’: Great bulb for a last hurrah of colour. Plant in spring /early summer, enjoy just as you’re beginning to panic about winter.
Angelica sylvestris ‘Ebony’: In the words of one nursery “this plant caused mayhem at Chelsea’” Wild angelica with all the drama – statuesque, dark finely cut leaves with giant buds that open into burgundy pink umbrels. Quite the show stopper.
Year round:
Cotinus coggyria: as a shrub or small tree, the foliage is an excellent foil to other planting – I love it with a lime hydrangea nearby.
Nettle is the new black
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but weeds are having a bit of A Moment. The plants formerly known as weeds (PFKAW) are back, and have the column inches to prove it. As a time-poor and untidy gardener, this is great news. The pollinators are delighted too, as they will no longer have to navigate the central reservation of a dual carriage way to get a hit of ox-eye daisy, because they can find it within the civilised confines of any Chelsea garden worth its salt. What I like most about this great emancipation of the weed is the collective roar of horror from people who I suspect might also think that nurses and teachers don’t deserve a payrise. Alas I digress.
So yes, hurrah, I agree, weeds are amazing, people have been saying this for a while now, it makes total sense - throwing open the garden gate to wild and unruly plants is a very pleasing indicator that we are all loosening up a bit about what a garden should look like and who it’s for. But sorry to be a party pooper, some of these PFKAW are, shall we say, troubled. As someone who is in a very toxic (not in the chemical sense) and somewhat acrimonious relationship with bindweed, (please don’t tell me how beautiful the flower is), they’re survivors for a reason: They need very little love to find their way in the world.
I have a client who is doing battle with Japanese knotweed, another very hard to handle plant that will knock £0’s off the value of your house before you can say subsidence. I mean, if you like bad boys, it’s quite impressive, but less so if you’re trying to make a garden / sell your house. Ragwort (which I have a secret and slightly dangerous crush on) will kill livestock if they take a liking to it, and as I rather embarrassingly discovered on holiday in France recently, Hemlock will give you a very nasty bout of loo time if you’re stupid enough to mistake it for wild celery (and considerably worse if you don’t realise this within 3 seconds of putting in your mouth). Hogweed, which is romping through hedgerows now, it’s another intoxicatingly dangerous beauty – and will give you the kind of kiss that leaves scars for years.
There are lots of forgotten incredible wild plants which we are rightly celebrating, but there are also some botanical bad boys we should treat with the respect and caution they command. The Thing About Wild Plants (series 2 coming soon), is that they are incredibly well-adapted, enabling them to thrive and survive, out-compete and excel where many can’t. This also means that if we invite them in, they’re likely to make themselves at home and not go without a fight. A fight then turns into chemical warfare, which is exactly what this whole exercise was designed to avoid. The big reason for welcoming in the wild is exactly that – to encourage more wildlife, birds insects and pollinators that need these plants to survive. If however we open Pandora’s box with no understanding of what’s in there and how they behave, we will end up using means to control them that are far more disruptive and damaging than the plants themselves. That’s not to say there aren’t lots of incredible plants that would horrify Daily Mail readers that wholly deserve a place in your garden and will make the pursuit of garden making all the more enjoyable and relaxed as a result – and the bees will be delighted too.
My favourite PFKAW
Cow Parsley. Desert island plant, there is nothing that comes close to the magic and joy of the moment in May when the hedgerows burst into clouds of Cow Parsley. Irrefutable proof of the new season, it makes me deliriously happy. Would definitely, and do definitely encourage in gardens, especially if there’s a hammock nearby. Sexy black “Ravenswing” also available.
Ox Eye Daisy. See above as sign of a shift in season. This one a bit later, but no less joyous. The pure innocence of a wide-eyed daisy is hard to argue with. Would allow in gardens but probably just bigger ones unless you don’t mind it everywhere.
Valerian. Prefer white but pink the wilder of the two. Very useful plant– flowers forever, bees love it, can withstand a wayward football. The pink is a raspberry pink which I find hard to work in my garden, leaves a lovely glaucous sort of grey-green. Most happy in cracks and walls.
Nettle – probs wouldn’t actively encourage in my garden, but have a life-long respect for it and will never begrudge those hot little stings. Soup, pesto, Nettle spanokopit-wotsit, amazing dye plant, incredible fiber plant (which is no longer produced but was so soft it was used to make babies’ blankets). Love its form, Lamium it’s stingless sister, widely adored. And Beata Heuman has just done a fab nettle print, so it has officially Made It.
Achillea / yarrow – found in grass of all sorts – meadows verges and lawns belonging to people who don’t have ambitions to host croquet tournaments. Very distinctive smell, the wilder cousin has lovely white flat top flower heads, and excellent furry pistachio foliage, a hummock of which is a lovely thing. Cultivated siblings come in a rainbow of colours and are unbeatable for a strong hit of colour that lasts for weeks.
Cool beans
Culinary staples around the world, although somewhat under-represented in the UK, usually appearing in orange gloop straight from a tin. Baked, broad, runner, French, black, red, kidney, and many more besides, beans are a marvellous thing.
A rare occasion where I am grateful to Instagram and its malicious algorithm for anticipating that I would like a better bean before I even did, it bombarded me with better bean content for weeks until I succumbed and bought a batch of supposedly superior legumes. The Bold Bean Co. boasts legions of fans who claim these are a different foodstuff altogether – that despite the not inconsiderable difference in price, once you go bold you’ll never go back. What finally got them into my basket was the claim that so good were these beans, they were often devoured straight from the jar with a spoon. I was sold.
Well I can report, they really are good. Sorry, I know it’s annoying that it’s always the more expensive version that is better, but these really are a different jar of beans. And there is a very good reason for it. I chatted to Amelia, whose bean empire this is, and she explained why they’re so good (and more expensive). They’re not just your average bean, grown for maximum yield (which invariably compromises on flavour). They’re chosen purely on flavour rather than yield – something that supermarkets, depressingly don’t do. They’re heritage varieties that wont find themselves on big supermarkets shelves because they favour quantity over quality. But luckily Amelia does, and as such we’re newly converted better bean evangelicals, and have been eating a lot of them.
But it’s also fresh bean season – broad, French, runner, borlotti… nothing quite as quietly pleasing as podding homegrown peas in the sun. Eating them also very pleasing.
Here’s some favourite ways with beans:
Broad bean, mint and feta on toast (delicious lunch, or show off snack)
Courgettes, black beans and Romesco
Braised runner beans with tomatoes and feta
Quick planty links:
Temperate rainforests, on our doorstep and a key part of the jigsaw