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I start with an apology that this may be slightly short, and as summer seems to have passed us by leaving a rather dreary, damp relation with a relentless appetite for wind in its place, so I am left struggling to keep the plants at the nursery upright today.
One of my all time favorite plants is Melissa, yes it sends it's copious off spring rioting across the garden like the hoards attacking the Bastille, but I wouldn't be without it , and a lot of it at that.
It’s native to southern Europe but was introduced to England very early and as such was for a while thought to be native to the southern counties. Melissa is highly attractive to bee’s and its from the Greek for bee that their name is derived. The common name of Lemon Balm or older, Sweet Balm comes from an abbreviation of Balsam. One of its oldest reputed properties is as a restorative and elixir of life.
Paracelsus believed it would, ‘completely revivify man’, and it was often used in treatments of the disorders of the nervous system. In the London Dispensary of 1696 it says, ‘An essence of balm, given in canary wine, every morning will renew youth, strengthen the brain, relieve languishing nature and prevent baldness’. John Evelyn believed it to be an aid to strengthening memory and ‘chasing away melancholy’. Llewelyn, Prince of Glamorgan, lived until he was 108 and breakfasted on sweet balm tea, as did a gentleman called John Hussey who reportedly lived until he was 116. Carmelite water, of which balm was the chief ingredient was drunk by the Emperor Charles V daily. Carmelite water is made with a mixture of spirit of balm, lemon peel, angelica root, and nutmeg.
Gerard and Dioscorides both stated that it helps in the healing of wounds, Pliny wrote, ‘Balm, being applied, doth close up wounds without any perill or inflammation’, and this is now recognised by modern science as the balsamic oils of aromatic plants are used to make surgical dressings.
Lemon balm will propagate readily from seed and cuttings in late spring through to early summer. I tend to sow the seed ripe however as I find this gives better germination rates. In our herb garden I tend to grow the plain green leaved plant, Melissa officinalis and Melissa officinalis ‘Aurea’ as this tends to be used a lot in salads in our house as each leaf is irregularly splashed with bright drops of golden sunshine like colour. However, both the variegated form and pure golden, or yellow form, tend to suffer from the harsh mid-day sun so offer them partial shade. 
Historically melissa was always grown near bee’s and not just because of there attractiveness in terms of it flowers, Gerard stated that, ‘It is profitably planted where bee’s are kept. The hives of bees being rubbed with the leaves of bawme, causeth the bees to keep together, and casueth others to come with them’. Pliny echoes this theory by stating, ’When they strayed away they do find there way home by it’.
Apart from drinking teas made with it and eating its leaves, melissa gathered in a bunch, tied and hung under a hot tap makes for a wonderfully invigorating bath. As the hot water runs over the leaves its oils are released, giving you a renewed sense of cheer and energy after a long tedious day.
Recently we started growing Melissa officinalis ssp. altissima, this wonderful balm has fast become my favorite, the leaves are slightly thicker, darker, and more pubescent. It is fast growing making a dense mound of foliage, however its best quality it the strong lime fragrance it emits either by brushing against it slightly or simply with the sun on it for a few moments. I find myself strangely addicted to its fragrance and when at the nursery, I repeatedly go over to it for another ‘hit’.
Being native to Crete I wonder if its strange lime fragrance is more evocative of the warm seas and recipes belonging to Patience Grey than just the sum of its parts. I am yet to plant one of these new found glories as I am waiting for the Autumn and a new ‘show’ border of plants at the nursery. Sean has worked fairly hard tracking down plants we are interested in trialing and we hope that the new border will be a trial bed of the new and exciting at the nursery.
Fenkel
You may ask when I fit the time in to write about these plants, and in honesty I spend brief moments almost snatching the words onto my macbook. 
Recently I heard someone say, ‘A gardens not complete without a geranium’ and I thought, ‘what plants would I not want to be without?’. I don’t think I believe any gardens to be incomplete without the addition of a certain plant but I think as a designer I tend to have a backbone of plants I use and rely on to help construct a planting scheme or use to achieve drama and scale.
Fennel, be it giant, bronze or green to name the most obvious, is one of those such genus that adds so much. Freely growing in most temperate parts of Europe and self-seeding along riverbanks it seems to have left its more native mediterranean and migrated almost with the Roman conquests to now stretch from North Wales across mainland Europe to Russia, India and parts of what was Persia.
Foeniculum was the named used to describe this plant by the Romans, derived from the Latin word for Hay, which for those who studied latin will come as no surprise. Foenum was then corrupted in the middle ages to Fanculum, which in turns gives rise to the alternative name and now largely disused common name of Fenkel.
The Romans used to eat the sweet edible young shoots and aromatic seeds. So popular was it, that Pliny attributed 22 medical remedies to it. He observed that, “Serpents eat it after casting their old skins and that they sharpened their sight by rubbing against the plant”. Now luckily in England we don’t see many serpents, and most ‘snakes in the grass’ are ones people talk about, (at least we know where the phrase originates) but the idea that fennel improves sight certainly has stuck.
Throughout medieval England, and Europe I imagine, on midsummers eve you would have seen fennel hung together with St Johns Wort to ward off evil spirits and witchcraft. On its own and a use it it still employed for it was served with fish, in this instance salt fish, during Lent.
Although references are made in early anglo-saxon cookery and medical recipes prior to the Norman conquest fennel was not widely cultivated until Charlemagne ordered it be grown on imperial farms, stimulating popular growth.
In 1650 one of the most amusing descriptions of its uses was written, I laugh when I read it and imagine what a reaction such a statement might cause in todays world, “Both the seeds, leaves and root of our Garden Fennel are much used in drinks and broths for those who are grown fat, to abate their unwieldiness and cause them to grow more gaunt and lank”, its from William Coles Nature’s Paradise but it was also mentioned by the great herbalist Gerard in 1597. However, much earlier the ancient Greeks knew fennel as Marathron from the greek maraino meaning to grow thin. In Edward I’s reign the poor used to eat fennel seeds to satisfy hunger cravings on fasting days and to make unpalatable foods taste better, along with I presume suppressing hunger so ensure a small portion. Along with its now well known hunger suppressing capabilities it is also thought to convey longevity and to give strength and courage.
One of the most well known uses of fennel is as an accompaniment to fish, in 1640 Parkinson writes, ‘being sweete and somewhat hot helpeth to digest the crude qualitie of fish and other viscous meats. We use it to lay upon fish or to boyle it therewith’. Its this culinary use with Salmon or mackerel, in much the same way as parsley which saw patches of fennel in country house kitchen gardens.
Fennel also has calmative qualities, fennel tea can be made from a teaspoon of bruised seeds and used chiefly for those suffering from over excitement. I generally use small young shoots in salads or in soups. In Italy the stalks are eaten stripped with olive oil and pepper.
In the garden, it grows to make a billowing cloud of feathery foliage, a great foil in the middle of the border. When the flowers are open deep sulphery yellow, you can smell its presence on the air and I always associate the smell of fennel with high summer. It works really well to reduce the ‘weightiness’ of some plants. The light almost dancing foliage seems to lift other plants in its company and one really good example of this effect was dark leaved Dahlia ‘David Howard’ planted en mass with purple fennel. If your a minimalist fan I have seen a rather forward thinking piece of urban planting recently where purple fennel was planted by the 1000’s against a backdrop of bleached timber walling. The foliage seemed to resemble a bubbling moving piece of art as it stretched its way along the lengthy facade.
On the social front I am fresh from Hampton Court. We had a good lengthy nose around on Tuesday and really enjoyed ourselves. The Show Gardens were all interesting from a designers point of view, it is endlessly engrossing studying the way people interpret the space they create along with looking and evaluating your own design take on the garden. I often imagine the gardens with ‘this’ added or ‘that’ moved slightly. I am sure many other garden designers would tell you a similar story. Being so large, I am sure there was plenty we missed. One thing which sets Hampton apart, like Malvern, is its setting. The Wren facades are your constant partner when walking the show ground and their subtle, rather understated but large presence it a lot to live up to as a designer when in such close proximity.
Naturally you take something away from going to the show and for me it was a beautifully constructed, grey painted Shepards Hut complete with wood-burner. Its proportions where immaculate, the height of the hut in relation to the wheels was actually a rather joyous affair. I have decided that this is the Office to aspire to!
The other more subdued feeling I took away from the show was, ‘Don’t look for more merit than your learning deserves’, take what you want from this but for me, the wider landscape of Hampton Court was an unquestionable lesson. Away from the din and razz mataz glamour, if you want, of the show and the right here and now, the architecture of the palace and the gardened landscape are there for much longer, lasting as a testament to well executed design. This is the same with a La Notre design its sheer brilliance doesn't persist due to a retrospective historical need. Far from it the French are a forward thinking people, in their V Republic, the gardens from Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte and the garden at Chateau de Gourdon have all survived principally because there were good enough to last.
The best show gardens last in photographic sense and the best designers will be commissioned to create lasting testaments to their skill as designers and artists using plants and landscape as their medium. I leave Hampton Court rather looking forward to Malvern Autumn Show. In just under 3 months time I will be there with all the other designers who have a passion for plants, gardens, and the ways they can be used to create a sense of place.
Now with one left to go on the 29th July, I thought I would just touch on the series of garden walks I had been asked to do at the Rococo Garden, Painswick. These walks have all attracted good numbers of people wanting to, rather nicely for me, spend an afternoon strolling the garden talking about its history and more often than not, talking about plants and gardens in general. It has lead to a number of other garden walks and talks with gardening groups which has been really enjoyable and unexpected. Luckily for me I love to be involved in a conversation about horticulture and you always find something out you didn’t know before and I have to confess I have been invariable invited along for lunch or tea and cake so I can’t complain.
After writing about Tea, which I adore, I began to think about other plants which have had such an influence. Immediately there were two many options and some of those, although I am sure interesting to pursue, where not terribly exciting to me.
I have therefore struck upon a plant who’s immature flowers I positively gorge upon through the first parts of summer and after its over I look forward to eating copious amounts of its unrelated counter part. Artichokes, or as none artichoke lovers may call them, ‘make me chokes’.
Globe artichoke, Cynara scolymus, is one of the oldest continually cultivated vegetables and was a main stay of ancient Greek & Roman tables. Prepared in a earthen glazed bowl, ours all being chipped, with some plump over ripe tomatoes, a liberal splash of olive oil, torn basil leaves and a good course grinding of salt & pepper, you could when staring into the mixture, be transported back to Imperial Rome. The combination oozes not only the warmth but the intensity of a Mediterranean summer.
Artichokes were introduced into England in the 16th century and was grown in monastic gardens both for decorative reasons and as a vegetable. However, history is littered with references to them, in the 4th Century BC Theophrastus stated that they were most pleasant boiled or eaten raw.
In 1730 and a description of culinary variation I particularly like, Tournefort says, “ The Artichoke is well known at the table. What we call the bottom is the thalamus on which the embryos of seeds are placed. The leaves are the scales of the empalement. The choke is the florets, with a chaffy substance intermixt. The French & Germans boil the heads as we do, but the Italians generally eat them raw with salt, oil and pepper”. Something which I can testify as true from a conversation I had with Felice Tocchini of Fusion Brasserie. Whilst visiting our nursery he picked out an Italian variety and told me the best way to eat them was raw with pepper, salt & oil.
However, I have made a delicious Artichoke au Gratin from a 1950’s french cookery book which belonged to my grandmother and with the addition of a little garlic, cheese and cream it is unrecognisable and utterly more-ish.
We grow two varieties which we sell at the nursery, the original ‘Green Globe’, which is a french variety not to be confused with the F1 modern hybrid and an Italian ‘Violetta di Chioggia’
The thistle like flowers when not being eaten do make highly attractive border additions, rich violet blue set of against the grey-green scales stoutly reaching up to 6ft. Some gardeners use globe artichokes in exactly the same way as Cardoon’s, Scolymus cardunculus, blanching the inner leaf stalks in the early part of the year. Cardoon’s need a lot of room and are renowned for there spiny growth, however it has its followers, Pliny recommended its medical properties and Dioscorides makes reference to large scale production around Great Carthage.
Both Cynara scolymus and Scolymus cardunculus, although different genus, are related being members of the Compositae family, which is the 2nd largest flowering family. Also a member of the same family and therefore related sharing the floral number/key is Jerusalem Artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus. The only ‘Artichoke’ which is in no way related is the Chinese Artichoke, Stachys affinis, which is a member of the mint family, Labiatae or as its known for standardisation Lamiaceae.
There is an irony with Jerusalem Artichoke, its native to the Northern American Plains, prolific in lakes of Canada and reaching Sastatchewan but it does not grow naturally in the lands historically known to us as Judea. I really enjoy slow roasting the Jerusalem Artichoke and have always been a little disappointed that there are no traditional indigenous jewish recipes using it, especially for a plant I had always taken to grow on their soil. However, enlightenment came as to the origin of the Jerusalem Artichoke and sadly for me it was not some mystical story created in the City of Gold, no King David on Temple Mount tucking into a plate of Artichokes, at least not this artichoke, beneath his temple, no it actually is a corruption of an Italian word. Italians referred to Helianthus Tuberosus as the sun-flower artichoke, due no doubt to the small golden flowers it produces. So in Italian Jerusalem Artichoke is Girasola articiocco, Girasola meaning, ‘turning to the sun’.
Joseph Hooker writing in 1897 states, “In the year 1617, Mr John Goodyer of Mapledurham Hampshire, received two small roots of it from Mr. Franqueville, of London. In October of the same year, Mr Goodyer wrote an account of it for T. Johnson, who printed it in his edition of Gerard’s ‘Herball’, which appeared in 1636 where it is called Jerusalem Artichoke. Prior to that is was also called by the same name in ‘Paradisus’ published in 1629. He also gives the reader some recipes, boiled and skinned to be eaten with butter and wine along with baking in pies. He also informs the reader that in some parts they are known as potatoes of Canada, being introduced by the French from Canada and cooked in milk served with beef”.
On a cultivational note, I have found it is best to grow them in the same spot for 3 years and then relocate the best tubers, as left in the same spot they seem to grow smaller in following years. However, the trick here is to be able to clear the ground of the original bed as they grow from the smallest of tubers.
My last ‘choke’ is the Chinese artichoke. I find this is grown best in a permanent cold frame because it seems to disappear over winter otherwise. In china, Chinese artichoke is known as Tsanyungtzu & in Japan its known as Chorogi. It was first introduced in 1888 by Dr. M. T. Masters and is widely eaten in France. Just like Jerusalem artichoke you harvest over winter. A light scrub and a bake in the oven makes for a nice nutty addition to roast potato’s. They are rather too easy to look after, plant in the cold frame, leave them to do there own thing and harvest in winter as needed or you can eat them raw in salads.
 I am rather fond of tea. It has an addictive quality far above its contents as a beverage, being steeped in exotic, nostalgic and nationalistic history. The plant which produces tea may not be native but I like to think that the customs we have built around the drink made from it, go some way to identifying ‘Englishness’.
The Dutch were already importing tea from China in 1610 at an equivalent rate of £60 a lb of leaf or more regularly at a rate of 1lb sage leaf, which the Chinese adored, for 4lb of tea leaf. Tea was also enormously popular in pre-revolutionary France with Madam de Maintenon being amongst its ardent followers with Louis XIV ordering two investigations into the medical and health benefits. Now it’s a well known fact that by dilating the blood vessels tea does improve the flow of blood to the brain, a lack of which does cause migraines something I have never suffered thankfully. Rather sadly to my mind like so much of the ‘acienne regimé’ it was lost to the French as they took up coffee. In Britain, the once great lover of tea, we have consumed huge volumes. Starting out as a luxury item, tea was presented to Charles II by the East India Company at a rate of 50 shillings per pound. At this time imports of tea stood at 20,000lb a year with a cup, porcelain you would hope, costing a shilling in 1706 at Thomas Twining’s Golden Lion in the Strand. Although around the 1790’s we were using 16 million pounds of tea annually, knowledge of the actual plant was limited to a very few. One of the first Tea plants, Camellia sinensis var. sinensis was brought from China by Dr. James Cunningham around 1702. In Hortus Kewensis, Thea bohea is listed as having been planted by John Ellis in 1768 along with an illustration of the Duke of Northumberland’s tea plant in flower in 1771 at Syon House. Perhaps the most horticulturally important ‘grower’ of tea to us was Carl Linnaeus, who reportedly tried 20 times to successfully grow a specimen. There are many accounts of the misadventures of trying to get specimens to Linnaeus, from plants being eaten by mice on ship to being blown over board but in 1763 two plants were successfully taken to Uppsala where they were grown, enabling Linnaeus to study them in depth. Europe’s first commercial crop of tea came, incidentally in 2005, at Tregothnan over looking the River Fal in Cornwall. 
For centuries all tea came from China, this trade was called tribute by the Chinese who refused to converse in any language except Chinese referring to the European traders as barbarians. From our dealings with the Chinese the word ‘cash’ passed into the English language. In the 1840’s whilst trying to set up tea growing in India, Robert Fortune who had collected material in China for the Royal Horticultural Society donned a disguise and returned to China to purchase seed of tea plants. He wanted only the finest seed from the prime tea growing plantations and using his knowledge of Berberis japonica, which he knew only grew in prime tea districts, he told his collectors to bring samples of the berberis along with the tea, no berberis no cash. Cash being the Mandarin word for money. However, for all this hard work the preference for Chinese tea to make plantations in India was soon replaced with the local indigenous species, camellia assamica, for which we have developed a greater taste over time and interestingly is self-sterile.
Tea also had a precarious start in Ceylon and it was only the coffee blight of 1869 that turned a few hundred acres of plantations into the worlds largest exporter for a while during the 20th century. During the 20th century tea was truly characterised as England’s national beverage. From the strains of high society and the importance of when to add the milk and handle the tea cup properly, to Imperial Britons returning home from dangers abroad being welcomed not by ‘glad your safe’ but ‘delighted to see you, cup of tea?’. During the Second World War, tea cars cheerily went out at great danger to themselves to ensure those bombed out during the blitz could be offered a ‘cuppa’. It’s from these great heights of affection that today tea seems to be confined for the greater part to a sorry state of ‘dust’ in a bag. I know you can buy leaf tea, ours is procured at Fortnum & Mason, we have a broad selection ranging from Smokey Earl Grey, Earl Grey, Russian Caravan, Rose Pouchong and Osmanthus in our cupboards at home, but sadly when out at a restaurant or, dare I say it, one of the multitude of dull bland high street ‘coffee houses’, I never take tea, generally because it is bland and badly made. What happened to our national love of the drink made by the great camellia, a plant that changed the world, sent men halfway across the globe to discover its secrets or die trying? In 1956 we consumed 10lb per person of tea, today its roughly 4.85lbs annually. On the whole I think I would have joined the five thousand who were secretly being trained to ‘brew tea’ should we have been invaded in the 1940’s, an exercise which would have been as essential to our national resistance as any guns and explosives. 
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