Saturday, 26 April 2025
I’m watching as the evening sun dapples through a small bucket of many, many striped and broken tulips.
On a small, side table is a Bold Bean jar containing a smaller group of blooms, these ones in soft, butter yellows and pinks.
[ Tulipa ‘Flamingo Queen’, 26.04.2025 ]
[ The garden after a big tidy and sort, getting ready to open, 26.04.2025 ]
On my mantlepiece is a little vase of ‘La Belle Epoque’ with ‘Paul Scherer’, a perfect couple, stunning, starting to mellow in their final, glorious days. Loosening. Sighing.
I am feeling an odd sort of grief as my eyes pass over from one vessel to the other. Each individual bloom is exquisite. Each collective vase a thing of perfect beauty. That dappled light will only last a moment. These tulips - these exquisite, beautiful tulips - are almost over.
[ Tulipa ‘Helmar’, ‘Happy Generation’, ‘Slawa’, ‘Grand Perfection’, ‘Flashback’, ‘Estella Rijnveld’ ]
[ Tulip ‘Blushing Lady’, ‘Spryng Break’ (I think), ‘Copper Image’, ‘Slawa’, ‘Charming Lady’ ]
I ought to have foreseen that I would feel a sense of loss as the tulip season ends. Don’t get me wrong, there are still tight buds yet to bloom outside in the garden, and summer waits impatiently in the wings - rose buds, lily stems, iris leaves, the first purple bubble of an allium - but the glory of this moment is fleet of foot and it is silently, elegantly slipping away.
A few of the people walking past my window have glanced in at the flowers. On two separate occasions, older women have paused for a split second to take them in before seeing me staring back and moving on as if caught peeping.
But I put them in the front window because they deserve to be seen. But I wanted to look at them, too. So here we are. They stare in, I stare out. The tulips, like a still life painting, or a mid-explosion firework, in between.
I have done a huge amount of work in the Battersea garden over the last two days. Having picked all of the tulips as they bloomed, there were some empty pots that needed sorting out, and some gaps in the scheme that needed filling. I am opening my garden to friends and family next Saturday (read why here), so I have tidied up, and laid down more gravel, and been to the tip.
I ought to have been continuing to re-paint the guest room in readiness for a lodger to move in. But doing so would mean first tackling the task of sorting out all of my clothes which I piled up onto the bed in there about three months ago thinking I would have a big clear out since I have gained so much weight.
But I don’t want to sort out my clothes (obviously. Who would want to confront that nightmare) and so I haven’t. As a result, the guest room has not been repainted and prettied up and so I cannot yet advertise it to find a lodger. Which is a problem because I’ve been back in London for three days and now have three parking tickets to pay. Yup, I got a parking ticket every day. For three days. I… Words fail me.
But then I look at this bucket of tulips - an arrangement that I have spent hours fussing over and fiddling with - and I look at each extraordinary bloom, and I am in heaven.
All I really want to do is put this bucket in the car, strap in the dogs, and head back to Daisy Barn, but I promised myself I would not leave until the fucking guest room is sorted out. So naturally I spent the day at the garden centre and faffing in the garden and planting and replanting, and standing back and looking intently at this bed and then that.
Sunday, 27 April 2025
I went to Chelsea Physic Garden this morning. It wasn’t planned, but then nothing ever is.
[ Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum), Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
It was such a glorious, sunny morning, so I hopped on the back of my electric moped (absolutely the greatest thing in the world as long as you remember to charge it, and the absolute best way of travelling around London between mid-April and mid-November/whenever the windchill gets too cold as long as you don’t need to take dogs/people/things with you) and zipped over the bridge to Chelsea.
I parked up by Birley Bakery on Cale Street to pick up a croissant, and walked down to the secret gate on Royal Hospital Road via Hagen for one of the best coffees available in the area (the other is at Roasting Park on Pavilion Road).
A friend once gave me a year-long membership to CPG as a birthday present which was quite honestly one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given, but I let it lapse and so I paid the £13.50 entrance fee and strode in, staring at the floor as I walked through the gift shop so as to avoid temptation.
I know this garden well. I am privileged to live only a 10 minute moped ride away, and to be able to pop in often. And yet each time I do, I visit a different garden.
[ Pamplemousse, Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Rosa ‘Bengal Crimson’, Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Rosa ‘Bengal Crimson’, Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
The ‘landmarks’ remain familiar, of course. I know where the greenhouses are, full of humid mist and pelargoniums, and where the pond is with it’s astonishing, elegant, perpetual ballet of dragonflies. I know how to navigate to the back wall, with it’s fine, old gates out onto the embankment of the River Thames. But the rest - the plants - despite being preserved by a world-class staff are different on every visit.
They aren’t, of course. This is a historic garden. The huge Rosa ‘Bengal Crimson’ has stood sentinel by the side gate onto Swan Walk for goodness knows how long.
But each time I visit, I feel I am seeing it for the first time. There are always surprises. Like the staircase in Harry Potter, that “led somewhere different on a Friday”. It is as if each time I enter that unassuming gate, I am taken to a new place. That pond rockery has - apparently - been there since 1773, but I could have sworn I’d never seen it before.
[ Tulipa ‘Go Go Red’, Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
I was just admiring the bulbous grapefruits on an unassuming tree when I overheard a Frenchman say to his little girl something along the lines of ‘let’s let maman have a few minutes’. Poor maman was nursing a tiny baby, and trying to eat a pastry, while the little girl very much wanted her attention. It seemed the little girl needed a distraction so, blowing the dust off my horrifically poor, schoolroom French, I asked if she had seen the pamplemousse? The little girl said nothing, but her father was grateful for the suggestion.
[ Epimedium, Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
I did my best to engage the petite fille in conversation about the plants in my broken (let’s face it, shattered) French. Did she like pamplemousse for breakfast? Did she like the pink peonies? Did she know that fairies lived in this garden? She said nothing, despite her father’s encouragement, but it allowed maman time to have a mouthful of croissant.
A beautiful, red-breasted robin decided to join in the conversation. He flew right up to us, and then away. We three followed. And then he sat atop what I think was a water sprinkler and sang his heart out. I don’t know whether the little girl was enchanted but I was - enough for the both of us!
Little robin, bold as brass, drawing us in, taking centre stage, and performing his number. Of course now anytime I see a robin it crosses my mind (just for a moment) that David has come to visit. It isn’t a belief, just a thought.
[ Inside the weeping mulberry, Chelsea Physic Garden, 27.04.2025 ]
The little robin flew away. I left the father and his sweet little girl to go and play in the extraordinary hollow of a weeping mulberry, moulded over decades into a tiny cathedral, and I continued through the familiarly unfamiliar garden.
I came home and sat in my own garden. The tulips - which open and close with the sun - had their arms wide open. ‘Slawa’, which in bud is beautiful but unassuming, had opened out into the most staggering, stained-glass colours. ‘Marilyn’ twirled her arms above her head like a joyful dancer. Bella and Leo sunbathed by the pots, soaking in the unseasonal heat.
[ Tulips at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Slawa’ at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulipa ‘Mariage’ at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Sunbaked sausage, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Spot the teddy bear, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Mariette’ at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Marilyn’ at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Mariette’ at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Estella Rijnveld’, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Charming Lady’, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Flamingo Queen’ at home, 27.04.2025 ]
[ Tulip ‘Blushing Lady’, ‘Spryng Break’ (I think), ‘Copper Image’, ‘Slawa’, ‘Charming Lady’ ]
[ Tulipa ‘Helmar’, ‘Happy Generation’, ‘Slawa’, ‘Grand Perfection’, ‘Flashback’, ‘Estella Rijnveld’ ]
Great post…love your pictures and writing
I’ve never been and must put it on my list. What is it about gift shops that is so utterly irresistible? Maybe because they’re often in such beautiful places, the National Trust for example, that by buying something we’re hoping to prolong the magic? Who knows but well done for resisting.