Then when it feels it has built up enough of a foundation it sends up a huge flowering
Then when it feels it has built up enough of a foundation, it sends up a huge flowering stem, topped by flat heads of yellow flowers. But the leaves are its chief glory, though leaf sounds too meaty, too hunky a term for this filigree spun wirework. Next to it are the spear leaves of a tall white-flowered iris, Iris orientalis and a mound of brunnera, covered now with forget-me-not flowers.Iris leaves, that is the tall spear-like kind that go with beardless irises such as I orientalis, I sibirica and I. monspur are very useful at this time of the year, acting like exclamation marks among low mounds of geranium leaves or thalictrums just heaping themselves up into action You couldn’t use bearded iris like this. They would resent having their rhizomes covered or shaded by vigorous neighbours But I. orientalis seems to grow anywhere in sun or shade, the leaves eventually reaching three feet in height.There ia new giant cow parsley (Selinum tenuifolium) on the bank, too, not such a hypnotically vivid green as the giant fennel, nor as finely cut in its foliage. But one of my heroes, the Edwardian gardener E A Bowles called it “the queen of the umbellifers” So I had to have it.
Planted out as a baby, it seems improbable that it will eventually top five feet. Height is a difficult thing to bear in mind when you are placing plants. I find it easier to feel their width, to be aware of sideways growth.The selinum flowers with typical flat umbellifer heads, white, rather than yellow, but, as with the giant fennel, it is planted for its leaves rather than its flowers. They help to disguise the bottom of the multi- stemmed Judas tree That is about to erupt in its abrupt way into purple flower.
They burst, stemless, straight out of the trunk and branches It is a weird trick. You can imagine the flower inside, head butting the imprisoning bark and – although you would not have put any money on it – winning.Bowles, who as a writer never wants to leave you in any doubt as to his opinions, also called Selinum tenuifolium “the most beautiful of fern- leaved plants” Not at the moment, it’s not The laurels go to sweet cicely, Myrrhis odorata. That is because it is one of the few of the fern-leaved umbellifer tribe to get its act together this early in the year. The foliage is a wonderfully fresh green, and it is already in full flower, heads of greenish, greyish white, not showy, but quite sweet-smelling.
Does the plant get its “odorata” tag from the flowers? Or from the leaves, which smell of aniseed?It grows in deep shade in our garden, partnered by the hefty spotted leaves of pulmonaria and the shiny strap foliage of hart’s tongue ferns. Gerard, one of the early herbalists, said that to eat it was “exceeding good, holsome and pleasant among other sallade herbes”, but perhaps they were keener then on the taste of aniseed than we are now. In the north country, the plant was once used as a polish, rubbed into oak panelling and buffed up to a shine when the juice had dried off.Sweet cicely is a compact plant, no more than two feet high and wide. You wouldn’t want it in a starring role, but it is usefully early and unfussy about shade. It makes a good backdrop for low mats of Primula vulgaris sibthorpii which are flowering now, short-stemmed mauve flowers, each with a yellow eye.
