Pink

I wouldn’t ever choose a job where I had to wear a uniform. Sometimes I had no choice but that’s another thing entirely.

Uniforms are an essential requirement in lots of jobs. Football teams need them, so do police and nurses and firefighters. I just wouldn’t wear one myself by choice and I wouldn’t follow a line of work where the wearing of a uniform was compulsory. The way I feel, I wouldn’t wear a uniform unless my life depended on it. I’ve certainly had my share of jobs where I had to wear one, back when I was younger. Like when I cleaned hotel rooms or worked at a fast-food chain or was a Pharmacy Aid at a public hospital. Uniforms turn an individual into a member of a recognisable group. I guess I don’t want to belong to a recognisable group. I want to be recognised as an individual from the get-go.

Until recently that’s how I felt about pink flowers. That they all belonged to the same group. You know that group called ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’, which candy floss and flamingos and flannelette nighties all belong to. It wasn’t until I started looking at and thinking about the pink flowers in my own garden that I realised they weren’t all the same. I also discovered that I like pink flowers and always have…only I didn’t know it.

Because, without planning to, I’ve ended up with lots and lots of pink flowers in every part of my garden.

I consulted some of my high-brow gardening books to find out how they (high-brow gardeners) used pink in the garden. They quoted colour theory and the principles of good taste. According to them, cool pinks and warm pinks shouldn’t be mixed, nor should red and and pink (at least certain shades of red and certain shades of pink). What a load of codswallop. Just as well painters like Bonnard and Matisse didn’t subscribe to rules like that or we’d never have had ‘Salle à manger à campagne’ or ‘L’atelier rouge’.

Gardeners shouldn’t get bogged down with rules when it comes to using colour in the garden (is what I think). Experiment, experiment, experiment! If a colour doesn’t work then move the plant, that’s what autumn is for. If you want colour inspiration then look no further than visual artists, painters and printmakers and anyone who puts different colours together in a way that pleases you. I checked out Bonnard.

Bonnard showed me that pink goes with anything. He combines warm pinks, cool pinks, reds, oranges, yellows, purples, blues and white all in the same picture. Incidentally, magenta (which is a bright blueish pink) was named after a battle in Lombardy in 1859.

Here are a few of my pink flowers.

When I bought this hydrangea it was pink. Then it changed a brilliant clear blue. Blue wasn’t going to work in the red and purple garden so I moved it to the orange, yellow, blue and purple garden. This year the Hydrangea turned pink again. Luckily a number of pink plants have ended up in the same garden. So now it’s the orange, yellow, blue, purple and pink garden (with a few splotches of white).

I grew these cosmos flowers from seed. I was expecting taller one. I’ve grown white cosmos and a different pink cosmos before and they were all tall leafy plants. These ones aren’t, they’re short. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. The flowers themselves are pretty but the height isn’t. Dwarf plants are all very well in a rock garden but not in my flower garden. I don’t, as a rule, like dwarf versions of tall plants.

My sister gave me this Sweet William a number of years ago. It’s tucked in under a rose and a Calycanthus in a raised bed. So it’s at hip-level as I walk past. It reminds me of my nana. I’m growing tall Sweet William from seed this year. It hasn’t flowered yet.

I have 2 pink Cistus bushes in my red and purple garden. I have lots of roses and salvias and euphorbias in this garden. The 2 Cistus plants have a semi-compact form that looks great with the other plants that sprawl. They hide the ugly rose stems too. These Cistus flowers are beautiful, like crumpled silk.

This is sugary-sweet pink personified. It’s a federation daisy called ‘Sugar Candy’. I cut it back before Christmas and it’s coming away again. It’s such a cheerful looking plant.

I’ve always harboured a deep prejudice about miniature roses. To me they have the whiff of council planting schemes about them. I have memories of urban raised beds in the 80s containing an assortment of white scentless miniature roses, prostrate rosemary and ivy.

Last year I extended the garden beds in the back garden, stealing valuable space from my 2 dogs. I went on a bit of a rose frenzy and planted as many roses as would fit. Then I ran out of space. But I still had this craving for more roses. The solution was old fashioned miniature roses. The term ‘old fashioned’ kept me at a safe distance from ugly council planting schemes and introduced me to a group of plants my garden needed.

The little rose above goes by two names. I bought it as Rouletii, but it also goes by Pompon De Paris. It’s a China Rose dated from the early 1800s. It may be a much older rose because its history is a mystery. It has a light tea scent and very pretty leaves and flowers.

Here are 3 pink roses with similar flowers (above and below). The one above is a Pemberton Musk Rose called Ballerina and it’s a climber, though not a big one. I didn’t know it was a climber when I planted it in the middle of a flower bed. I might move it. Then again I might not.

This rose is called Eva. It’s a Kordes Hybrid Musk from 1933. It’s a shrub rose. I really like it but the rosarians don’t. It has a sweet musky scent and very very pretty flowers.

The third rose (above) in this group is a rambling rose called ‘Apple Blossom’ from 1932. I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to train it up my cabbage tree.

One of my favourite roses this summer would have to be Felicia. I bought it bare-rooted in winter. It’s a Pemberton Hybrid musk from 1928 and it has the most delicious scent. Apparently it will eventually make a large bush, at the moment it comes up to my knees.

I love Achillea almost as much as I love roses. I have lots of different kinds and colours. The white ones, with daisy-like flowers, were the first out, while the rest are just starting to flower. Here are 2 different pinkish ones in the front garden.

After falling out of favour for a number of years, dahlias are back in fashion. Flower fashion is a very fickle thing. Remember when Gerberas were all anybody wanted? I’ve always loved dahlias. My mum grew them when I was a kid. Nostalgia always trumps fashion in my book. I have a lot of them in my garden and, as it turns out, lots of them are pink. Here are the first ones to flower.

My friend Ali gave me this unknown cactus-like dahlia from her garden.

I haven’t a clue what these two dahlias are called (the one above and the one below). I bought them in spring when I bought 12 different varieties, five of which were pink. They could be Devon Seattle or Havens Bees Knees or something else altogether. These two plants are in the same bed. One of them might even be a nameless dahlia I planted in their vicinity a few years back.

This bright pink dahlia above was growing in the garden when we bought the house. I’ve divided it many times. In some parts of the garden its flowers are a much paler pink.

Foxgloves are essential. I let them self-seed wherever they choose, be it cracks in the concrete or pink ones in a supposedly ‘non-pink’ garden border’ - as is the case here. I’ve grown some apricot ones from seed this year, which I’ve planted in shady areas in the front garden. I’ll have to wait another year to see their flowers.

In early October I bought 2 Adirondack Chairs and a matching yellow table. They were to be a family Christmas present. They were supposed to arrive in November. Christmas came and went, so did New Years. The furniture didn’t. Finally, after endless conversations with the guy who builds them, they arrived 2 days ago. They’re beautifully crafted and exceed my expectations in terms of comfort and beauty. All is forgiven.

Essential summer reading for gardeners has to be John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids. A captivating and creepy story that hasn’t dated. I highly recommend it.

Two weeks ago I came up with this plan to make my blogs shorter. I was only going to use 15 photographs maximum. And you know what, I used 23 in this one. If you’ve learnt anything about me by now it’s that I make up a lot of rules and then I break them…I just can’t help myself.