Plants in Vita’s borders, as Anne Scott-James writes, ‘are mixed with joyous informality and allowed freedom to grow naturally, with a minimum of stakes, secateurs and shears’. Some would say this tipped too far into messy chaos and I’m sure that’s true at times, but the art of ‘fine carelessness’ was Vita’s way. She was following a long tradition. Consider this quote describing a wedding masque in 1606: ‘The men were clad in Crimson, and the women in white. They had every one a white plume of the richest herons’ feathers, and were so rich in jewels upon their heads as was most glorious … As citizens of Arcadia, they had their hair “carelessly (but yet with more art than if more affected) bound under the circle of a rare and rich coronet”. Naturalness was virtue.’
It’s not naturalness, of course, but highly contrived art, an understanding that beauty lives on the border between the wild and the controlled. It’s just this sort of look that Vita was cultivating in her garden, a question of taking a risk, experimenting with something that might just be too much, but that also might give a kind of pleasure that the over-controlled can never even approach.
‘Fine carelessness’ is a carefully calibrated phrase. And it takes some doing.
8
SCENTS
Mahonia lomariifolia, one of Vita’s favourite families for winter scent.
Heavy, heady scents were another of Vita’s passions, and she spurs us on to prioritise planting as many things as possible that will add this other string to our garden’s bow. And it will give us a perfume reservoir which we can also bring inside. The important thing is the reminder that we should try to include one or two scented flowers in our gardens for every week of the year.
She had been brought up on the particular perfume of the Knole potpourri, a recipe followed there since the eighteenth century. It involved the ‘drying of double violets, rose leaves, lavender, Myrtle flowers, verbena, bay leaves, rosemary, musk and geranium, which were stored in jars with bay salt and many spices’, Vita explains in her book Knole and the Sackvilles, published in 1922. She periodically made a batch to scent her writing room and bedroom. As she says, one of the things that is so seductive about perfumed plants is that they behave so unpredictably. One moment, or one evening, they are exuding perfumes like a Sultan’s harem – and the next, there’s no hint, not the merest puff, of scent.
‘This whole question of scent in plants is one which I do not understand, though no doubt a scientific explanation is available. The warmth of the sun and the humidity of rain and dew account for much, as we all know from observation and experience, but there must be other factors unrevealed to the ignoramus. Why, for instance, does the balsam poplar waft its scent a hundred yards distant sometimes and at other times remain so obstinately scentless and sniff-less as to be imperceptible on the closest approach? These things retain their mystery for me, and I am not sure that I want the answer. A little mystery is precious to preserve.’
On New Year’s Day, 1956, she noted: ‘We know that we owe our pleasure in flower-scent to certain essential oils contained in cells which release their content by some process not fully understood. The essential oils are what we call attars, one of the few words for which the English language has to thank the Persian. (Attar of roses will be the most familiar to most people.) The chemical composition of these attars has been analysed, and you would be surprised to learn what everyday substances we should encounter if we were to take some favourite petals to pieces, alcohol for instance, vinegar, benzine; but I am no chemist and should blunder into some shocking howlers were I to pursue the subject. I profess to be nothing more than the average gardener, enjoying such useless but charming bits of information as that some butterflies and moths exude the same scent as the flowers they visit; that white flowers are the most numerous among the scented kinds, followed by red, yellow, and purple in that order, with blue a very bad fifth; that flowers fertilized by birds have no scent at all, birds being without a sense of smell; that dark-haired people have the most highly developed sense, whereas albinos are generally lacking it altogether; that some flowers smell different in the morning from in the evening; and, finally, that the flower-like scent so often observed emanating from the dead bodies of saintly persons may be due to the same breaking-down or release of essential oils in the first stages of decomposition. This supposedly mystical fragrance is usually said to suggest roses or violets.’
Before we get stuck into each season and the recommendations that Vita has for each of them, it’s interesting to hear which were her overall favourites, the really powerful wafting things, the plants she would perhaps have taken for their scent alone if banished to a desert island. This is what she tells us in More for Your Garden:
‘The first thing to say about scents in the open is that there are relatively few plants whose scent will hang on the air in such a way as to make you sniff in inquiry as you walk past. Many things smell good when you push your nose into them, or crush them, or bring them into a warm room, but what we are thinking about is the garden path as we stroll, something that will really hit you in surprise. I think my choice would be:
‘An edging of Cheddar pinks.
A hedge of hybrid musk roses, especially Penelope.
Some bushes of the rugosa rose, Blanc double de Coubert.
Azaleas.
A hedge of sweetbriar.
The Balsam poplar when it first unfolds its sticky leaves.
Lilium auratum, as a luxury.
‘I know everyone will disagree and everyone will have other ideas of his own. I quite expect a spate of suggestions about the things I have left out, for in the region of the five senses, the sense of smell (and the allied sense of taste) is highly controversial. Some people love the scent of phlox: to me, it suggests pigsties, not that I dislike pigsties, being country-born, and well accustomed to them. Much depends also on the keenness of the nose, and also on the fact that not all scented plants give off their scent all the time. They may vary with the temperature, with the degree of moisture in the air, and even with the time of day. This capriciousness makes them perhaps more precious. One may catch an unexpected whiff as one passes a bush of winter sweet or witch hazel, not to be detected an hour ago, or of that vanilla-scented little tree, Azara microphylla. And the scent of box in the sun, and of box-clippings as you crush them underfoot. And of a bed of warm wallflowers. And the night-scented stock, that lack-lustre annual which comes into its own after twilight.
‘But perhaps there is nothing to equal the woodland acres of our native bluebell, smoke-blue as an autumn bonfire, heavy in scent as a summer rose, yet young as the spring which is its season.’
WINTER SCENT
January and February are the gloomiest months of the year, and scented flowering shrubs one of the few beacons of delight we can guarantee in our gardens. There are a good handful with truly powerful scents, precious things from which you will catch an unexpected whiff as you hurry by and from which you can cut regular sprigs to bring inside.
Hamamelis × intermedia.
Vita loved hamamelis – witch hazel – it was one of her key plants for winter and for picking a small sprig for her desk. It is quite slow-growing, so either buy it big or plant it well in rich soil when you first move to a new garden, so that you can reap the benefits when it reaches a decent enough size. Then it won’t feel too vandalistic to pick.
‘Hamamelis mollis is perhaps more familiar to many people when they meet it in a bottle under the name Witch Hazel or Hazeline, but to the gardener it means a small shrubby tree, covered in the early part of the year with curly spider-like flowers on its naked branches. There is a particular charm about all trees which carry their flowers before their leaves, such as the almond or the judas: they have a cleanness of design, undisturbed by tufts of green; they allow us to observe the fine tracery of the twigs, while at the same time offering us some colour to look at. The Witch Hazel is certainly a tree which everyone should grow, for its merits are many, and if it has a fault I have yet to
discover it, except that it is a slow starter.
‘Mollis, a Chinaman, is the best of the family, which includes also two Americans (Virginiana and vernalis) and a Jap (Japonica), and arborea, which is the tallest of all but whose flowers are inferior to those of mollis. Mollis is perfectly hardy and even the flowers do not wilt in a heavy frost. It likes a sunny place, where it has room to develop and although it will not revenge itself upon you by perishing outright in a poor soil but will struggle manfully even against the stickiest clay, it will also show its gratitude for a good loam with some leaf-mould mixed in. Another of its virtues is that it starts flowering at a very tender age, so that there is none of that long weary wait of years until the plant has reached a certain size before embarking on the business which made us desire it. From the very first it is possible to pick it for indoors, and there are few things more welcome at the churlish time of the year when it occurs. New Year’s Day may see it open; perhaps even Christmas Day. The queer, wriggly, yellow petals with the wine-stained calyx at their base will last for quite ten days in water, especially if you bring it indoors while still just in the bud, and will smell far more delicious than you would believe possible if you had only caught it out in the cold winter air. So delicious is it, that the owner of one small new tree begins to long for the day when he can cut big generous branches instead of the few twigs which is all that he can get at first. Every one of these twigs, however, will be doing its best, and flowering on all its little length.’
Hamamelis – in all its guises – stands near the top of the late-winter perfume lists, and there are some new hybrids since Vita’s day. One of the best for scent is Hamamelis × intermedia ‘Aurora’, with copper-yellow flowers, and Hamamelis × intermedia ‘Aphrodite’, with slightly crimped, creamy orange-red flowers. Both grow into vase-shaped shrubs over time and are lovely for autumn colour. There is another new one, Hamamelis ‘Dishi’ which is also spectacular in autumn.
As well as choosing the right variety, the key to the good use of hamamelis is position. You need to get the low winter sun shining through the spidery flowers. These are distinctly two-toned in ‘Dishi’, orange-red in the middle and shading to gold at the tips. With the light at the right angle they really glow, and the scent is glorious.
That’s true of the elegant hamamelis, but not of another of Vita’s favourites for winter, wintersweet, Chimonanthus fragrans. This is not a looker and is only really suitable for a large garden, but it has a hugely powerful, intensely sweet scent. What Vita encourages is to tuck this into an out-of-the-way sunny corner. From there it can pour out its scent across hedges and over walls, so as you walk in and out of their fragrant cloud, you are looking around trying to spot the plant that is the perfume factory. That’s the precious thing – catching an unexpected whiff as one passes by, as well as the sprigs you can regularly cut to bring inside.
Chimonanthus won’t flower well for five or six years but is well worth the wait. Even in cold weather, you won’t believe the intensity of fragrance. Vita loved to pick boughs of it as soon as it came into flower: ‘It is extremely sweet-scented, even in the cold open air, long sprigs loaded with the strange maroon-and-yellow flowers can be cut all through January and February; it lasts for two or three weeks in water, especially if you smash the stems with a hammer, a hint which applies to all hard-wooded growth.’ Better still, sear the stem end in boiling water for thirty seconds – this makes the flowers last even longer.
She continues: ‘The Winter-sweet will eventually reach to a height of ten feet or more; it is happiest grown against a wall for protection, but I have seen it growing into a big bush in the open in a garden in Kent – not my garden, alas!’ If you pick it once it’s well established, you won’t then need to worry much about pruning.
There are several mahonias planted by Vita at Sissinghurst – she loved them for their lily-of-the-valley-scented flowers in January and February. We have one of the ones she planted beside our back door, and I pick a few sprigs when I want something delicate and pretty, with wonderful scent, to scatter in small glasses all around our sitting room or to put beside someone’s bed.
As she says, ‘Mahonia japonica … is a shrub highly recommendable if you have the right place for it. This does not mean that it is fussy as to soil. It likes a good loam, but does not object to some lime. What it really dislikes is a cold wind from the north or east, and who could agree more? We have those frightful months when knives from the north and east cut through us, and we shiver and shudder and wonder if we have caught a chill. We can go indoors and get warm again, but our plants have to stand out in the cold, and do their best for us. We ought to be grateful to them, and I do feel grateful to the lily-of-the-valley-scented barberry that will endure some degrees of frost and will give me its yellow racemes of flower in January or February. It must have been very exciting for the plant-collector Robert Fortune, when he first discovered this treasure in Chusan Island so long ago as 1848. Now, it is a commonplace in our gardens.
‘It has the great advantage of being evergreen. It has the disadvantage of resenting transplantation. This means you must get it from a good nurseryman who will send it with a huge ball of soil, so that it scarcely notices that it has been dug up; but once you have got it established you will find that it pays a good dividend, year after year, in increasing value of scented racemes to pick for indoors.’
For deep winter, on a smaller scale, you also want at least one coronilla and a clump of sarcococcas. The sarcococca Vita discusses only in passing, but these are brilliant for a more restricted shady space, and there are some excellent new ones since Vita’s day. I love S. ruscifolia ‘Dragon Gate’, which was collected by the gardener and broadcaster Roy Lancaster in China. It has a much smaller leaf than even S. hookeriana var. humilis and grows into a very compact little shrub, but still with the same wonderful scented flowers. Use it to fill a shady space where many other plants wouldn’t thrive.
Coronilla glauca is another which doesn’t look much but is a winter scent giant, and Vita loved it for its presence when most needed in the first few months of the year.
‘Easter Day,’ Vita commented in 1957. ‘It seems odd to look back to Christmas Day, but there is a gay little butter-yellow shrub in my garden which has been flowering continuously between those two great feasts of the Church, a sort of hyphen linking the Birth and the Resurrection which is more than can be said for most shrubs, so I think it deserves a write-up, as these recommendations are colloquially called, and a tribute of gratitude for the pleasure it has given me in its persistence throughout the dreary months.
‘The shrub I mean is called Coronilla glauca.
‘There are several sorts of coronilla. I know I shall be told that Coronilla emerus is the hardier, but on the whole I should advise glauca. I know I shall be told that it isn’t quite hardy. I know it isn’t supposed to be, but all I can say is that it came through the frightening frosts of February 1956, with no protection, and if a supposedly tender shrub can survive that test, it qualifies for at least a trial in the Home Counties and the south-west, though perhaps not in the Midlands, East Anglia, or the north. I must admit also that I planted it in a narrow border under the south-facing wall of the house, where it got the maximum of shelter against cold north winds or east winds; and there it still is, flowering exuberantly away, one of the most delightful surprises and successes I ever had.
‘I must add another word in praise of this rarely planted shrub. It has its own sense of humour. Sometimes it gives off so strong a scent as to delude me into thinking that I caught the scent of some neighbouring wall-flowers; then I discovered that the coronilla is powerfully fragrant by day and scentless by night.’
Vita loved to pick the odd sprig of daphne for a mini-bunch, and she had pots of the daphnes collina and tangutica in her cold greenhouse for bringing inside when they were in flower, but we have many more cultivars available to us now than in Vita’s day. If you were dispatched to the moon and allowed to take two
or three scents with you, daphnes would have to be one. Their fragrance is spicy, definitely eastern with a little citrus, but without the overtones of honey or sugar. It’s strong, but not cloying, a plant perfume you’re unlikely to tire of – one of the best in the world and miraculous for being around at the dullest garden time.
Daphne bholua is perhaps the best of all, and we now have several varieties to choose from. There’s Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’, which is relatively short-lived (ten to fifteen years is typical), but in that time flowers its heart out while giving off an incredible scent. It’s very hardy and ideal for small gardens, content in a pot (although pots need to be protected in cold weather to avoid damage if the root system freezes solid), and will fill your garden with its cinnamony-lemon fragrance for a good six weeks. There is also a less well known ‘Darjeeling’ form. ‘Darjeeling’ flowers very early, definitely in January, but it can be in flower by Christmas in a sheltered spot.
Mimosa (Acacia dealbata) was another Vita special, particularly for picking. But as she says, ‘It’s no good picking it until the flowers are fully out … You must wait until the clusters are as fluffy and yellow as ducklings.’ She recommends growing it as a pot plant until it gets too big, and then risk transferring it outside, particularly in the warmer counties of Britain. At Sissinghurst she grew it in a sheltered corner, ‘wrapping its trunk and lower branches in trousers of sacking for the winter’. I wish I’d done that with mine, which I lost last winter.
If you have a greenhouse, a good-sized pot of mimosa could be kept there as a stalwart February mood lifter, and the same applies to Jasminum polyanthum, the white-flowering jasmine (see here). You can leave its pot safe in the cold greenhouse and now and then pick a six-inch sprig, which will often have more than twenty buds and flowers plus a scent twenty times as powerful as the summer-flowering jasmine, J. officinale.
Sissinghurst Page 13