Of Snapdragons and Individuality

Thought for the Fortnight

My garden has had a bad summer. I mean a really bad summer. Few flowers have bloomed properly. It has been a major disappointment.

Yet my husband found this beautiful yellow snapdragon, looking healthy and well ensconced in the small back alley where I keep my garden rubbish bags and spare potting soil. It leads to a back door into a utility room. You can see the hose, which I had not put away because it was needed daily due to a lack of rain.

What is going on?

My garden

I grew up in Manhattan, where you never even thought about a garden. You could use a windowsill in theory, but you had to worry whether pots might be blown away and fall on someone walking by. Our apartment was on the second floor, so rooms rarely saw any light. We didn’t grow plants.

Yes, there are some houses with gardens and apartments with roof terraces in Manhattan, but only the lucky few live in them.

When I moved to London, I loved the idea that I could live in a moderately central location and still have a house with a garden. Not a big one ­– people who want a large garden choose to live further out from the centre. But a place where my family and I could sit out in the summer and I could make the occasional effort to grow something outdoors.

Our garden is roughly 18 feet by 20 feet, so nothing to boast about by British standards but a veritable park in my New York eyes. Soon after we moved in, we hired a garden designer (first and last time), who designed a circle of grass in the centre, with some paving stones and flower beds around the edges.

The circle is unusual and very pleasing. Unfortunately, grass doesn’t grow so easily there, but various other green things do, so it is generally green. The grass problem is something to do with the nature of what is underneath the topsoil. One neighbour gave up and laid down artificial turf. It looks great from a distance but wouldn’t please me. The other has paved the entire equivalent space.

Over the years, we have planted various small trees – including what was supposed to be a dwarf acer that turned out not to be a tree of restricted growth – which has taken over one corner of the garden. Plus loads of plants and bushes, some of which return year after year so there is no need to worry about them.

Providing colour

And every year I buy some plants to give the garden additional colour.

This year I bought several boxes of ‘plug plants’ (which for the uninitiated means the smallest imaginable cuttings, perhaps half an inch in height). With careful tending, these normally grow from the plant embryos they look like into fully formed flowering plants. Most were supposed to grow to about six to eight inches, according to the company I bought them from. They did before.

But this year they didn’t. I have geraniums about two inches high, without a flower amongst them, looking very lonely in their pots. I have unimpressive begonias that reach only two-three inches at best. There are what everyone calls ‘busy lizzies’ (impatiens), which are normally the easiest plants in the world to grow to a good size and yet they are only two inches or so with rather begrudging flowers.

We started the summer with almost no sun and ended with almost no rain (surprising as that may sound, given most people’s views of London weather). Something about that combination is definitely not life-sustaining in garden terms. We don’t even have a lot of slugs this year. I wonder where they have migrated to.

Only one plant grew to full size, some rudbeckia, providing a splash of yellow in one part of the garden.

I feel very annoyed about all this. I like the fact that our kitchen table, where we eat whether alone or with guests, looks out onto our little garden, but it is a very unimpressive view this year.

I have done my bit, but Mother Nature has not complied.  

Hooray for the snapdragon

Which brings me back to this lone snapdragon (official name: antirrhinum) which took itself off to its corner. Yes, we had a lovely big one in a clay pot, bought last year and which lived through the winter and bloomed in the spring. A moderate success.

But while we weren’t looking, a stray seed got blown about (I am guessing from the evidence), found a bit of soil between the paving stones and planted itself there. And bravely grew. And even flowered in this forgotten spot that is intended for storing stuff, not for looking good.

I hadn’t even noticed it until my husband was sweeping up and called it to my attention.

To me, it is somehow symbolic. Of those of us who stray from the main path and find a quiet corner in which to bloom. Of those of us who do our own thing, totally uncaring whether it is what people want or not. Of those of us who want to make a statement, but not on the main stage.

It is making an impressive stand – away from the main action – assertive and individual.

It makes me very happy, even though we can’t see it from any place where we would normally be. I just like to know it is there.

I love comments from anyone who wants to talk about flowers or gardens or making an impressive stand where no one knows you’ve done so. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

AND if anyone is feeling in a generous mood, all income received from this Substack goes to a very thoughtful homeless shelter in London - with virtually no administrative costs, so it all goes to those in need.