Sarah Coles

PLANTS AS PEOPLE

Wendy is my Inspiration.  She lent me a book on the Findhorn Foundation which I found very New Agey (communing with plants!  I only knew that as a flowery metaphor). But later I  stayed at the Findhorn Foundation for a couple of nights, and took part in a wonderful tribal circle dance in the hall.  A meditation room was roofed in heather, but I found it very difficult to even slightly loosen the cold grip of rationality I had been brought up in. Then Wendy started a meditation  group and invited me to join.  The others were far more spiritual (or away with the fairies) than me and still are. ...
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New Plants So Far …

    JANUARY Acanthus, I planted 2 from RHS under the gleditsia, having seen them do well in shade in Winchester. In March, find label Acanthus Tasmanian Angel, all variegated & spotty sickly – ugh! But is it them?   (August, and both doing ok and not variegated, and one has had a tall beautiful flowers) MARCH 25 Gladioli from Jane Fuest. Planted them in pot to see how they do and, that way, I have more control over them – slugs, weeds, watering etc. Jane’s are in pots. Varieties: Given names seem completely wrong.  Wine and Roses ‘soft pink & red blotch’. never...
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A DAY AT MR FOTHERGILL’S

Good to be here again, in spite of the howl of the A 14, with all these experts and all the veg and flowers bursting from the sandy soil. Never seen such runner bean flowers, a perfect peachy pink, grown over wigwams.  Named Celebration.  I’ll grow them here, allowing them to ramble over shrubs and pick them when I felt like it. All forms and colours of dahlias, but I am not keen on pompon, ball, waterlily, anemone or cactus types – they attract no insects, no bees, and would be like Essex bling in my garden which gets wilder by the day.  So, my best dahlia the single Happy Days,...
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As Flaubert said …

Flaubert said, to make anything interesting, you simply have to look at it long enough.   I never thought much about lobelias – I like them in summer flowing out of their pots, a cheery background to all the rest of the garden.  I buy em in and pull em out, summer and autumn – annuals are lightweights, not stayers. Then out of their hundreds of tiny blue flowers I looked at one. It had a face – slanting white eyebrows and black mouth with a droopy three pronged white beard to summon insects in, and I had never noticed. The platycodons are flowering, and I wait as the bud...
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