I am overly, though justly, fond of the little woodlanders. April is their month, and no garden is too small for a sampling – indeed, a window box or single flowerpot is all a few of the smallest ones require.
‘Woodlander’ is my shorthand for those mostly diminutive, early-flowering, shade-loving (or shade-tolerant) plants, whose moments in the footlights are brief. They behave like well-mannered dinner guests or sickbed visitors who know exactly when it’s time to leave.
Some – notably snowdrops and winter aconites – will have strolled onto the stage as early as January and linger on, lapping up what diminishing applause they can still muster. But, in the way of all invitees, they too will fade away, vacating ground for the emergence of their later-flowering cohorts, whose cue is the months’ warmer and longer days.
It’s Nature’s answer to the gardener’s skill of achieving ‘successive planting’ – a worthy practice whereby one plant or group of plants makes way for its natural replacement, like the string of arias that propel a Verdi opera.
The smallest of these mostly early woodlanders are classified as alpines and have their dedicated horde of admirers.
Many belong to the Alpine Garden Society, an international body founded in 1929 to promote the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock-garden plants, small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulbs, hardy ferns and small shrubs.
Be sure to take a hand lens when you attend one of their shows. Detail is all.
To British gardeners, the most familiar of herbaceous woodlanders are pulmonarias (lungworts), pulsatillas (pasque flowers) and brunneras (beefed-up forget-me-nots in welcome shades of blue, emerging in some varieties from silvery variegated foliage). All are indispensable.
Supreme among the blues is mat-forming Corydalis flexuosa. Look out for the varieties ‘Blue Dragon’, ‘China Blue’ and ‘Porcelain Blue’. In variance to the predominantly mid-green fernlike leaves, there is the cultivar named ‘Purple Leaf’, which shows intriguing dark red foliar markings in winter’s depths.
Euphorbia robbiae (Mrs Robb’s bonnet), a relatively low-growing spurge, gives generously of lime-green flowerheads at this time of the year – doling out textbook contrast alongside any blue-flowering neighbours. The eponymous Mary Anne Robb (1829-1912), a somewhat uncelebrated botanist and botanical artist whose drawings are held at Kew, introduced this form of E amygdaloides from her travels in north-western Turkey in the early 1890s. I’m not sure I can live without it.
Tiarellas (meaning ‘little turbans’, which their seed capsules resemble) and tellimas, along with vincas (major and minor), provide attractive, evergreen, weed-supressing ground cover. They’re best used under and around shrubs, where they can be left undisturbed to display plumes of fringed bells (tellimas) and nine-inch-tall spikes of creamy-pink ‘foamy’ flowers (tiarellas) through to mid-summer.
Trilliums, challengingly tricky in cultivation in this country but a glorious ‘weed’ in the eastern United States, are the woodland aristocrats. I buy fresh bulbs (rhizomes) most years but have failed spectacularly to build up any notable drifts.
A closing word to those bereft of a garden. Auriculas. These primulas, bred and cross-bred for yonks, have legions of aficionados. They travel miles at this time of the year to specialist shows where, in their infinity, wondrous flower shapes, colours and textures are judged for fame and fortune.
Traditional terracotta Long Tom pots are still made by ceramicists. But many growers now prefer plastic containers (easily concealed in more aesthetically pleasing crocks) to lessen some of the potentially taxing bits of cultivation.
Auricula-growing and -collecting become compulsive, bringing friendships and conviviality – aspects of gardening as vital as the plants themselves.
David’s Instagram account is @hortusjournal
The Oldie April 2023
