For a while in the ‘10s, Selfridges had a tattoo parlour. It was on the ground floor, tucked behind the big Topshop concession, by the side door onto Dukes Street.
I had read somewhere that Gwyneth Paltrow had been to get tattooed there, and so it was the natural choice for me, aged 21.
My boyfriend at the time - a great love in the way that only your University boyfriend can be - came with me. At the time, I was an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh reading English Literature. That boyfriend and I used to take road trips from Edinburgh to London (& back) in his car, playing an improvised ‘beat the intro’ game for hours and hours on the motorway on his 4th generation iPod.
I had been thinking about the tattoo for a considerable time. Ever since I discovered the Maxwell family ‘crest’.
My father had been preoccupied with his Scottish heritage. His father was Scottish, and there was deep fealty to these northern roots. We spent weeks of our summer and Easter holidays in a damp cottage nearby to our final, ancient Scottish relative. I hated every moment.
[ Yup, my parents made me wear Maxwell tartan kilts and take scottish dancing lessons ]
I didn’t go to university in Edinburgh on some deep, genetic quest. Nor because it was my paternal grandfather’s alma mater (he read law there, but later became a radio producer). It was quite simply the only decent university that would take me given the somewhat catastrophic exam results that had followed my father’s sudden death.
But once there as a student, in one of the millions of forgettable tourist tat shops, I found some trinket with the Maxwell clan’s crest. I had seen it before, of course, but had never paid it great attention. The insignia is “a stag couchant before a holly bush proper”, and beneath it said ‘Reviresco’. I learned that ‘Reviresco’ is a latin word meaning (depending on how you translate it), ‘I will flourish again’ or ‘I will be strong again’.
This obviously spoke - in a profound way - to my whole sad-but-ambitious-orphan-reading-English-Lit vibe.
[ The only picture I can find of the side of my right foot… 2016 ]
Knowing that one day I would have an important job (probably Prime Minister) that would require any ‘ink’ to be easily covered and concealed, I had the tattoo artist write ‘Reviresco’ across the side of my right foot in italic script.
Ever since that day in 2009, I had - probably at least once every couple of days - thought about my next tattoo.
I finally got it four days before my 36th birthday. Why it took me a full 15 years to finally do it is anyone’s guess. Save that for some of that time I really was doing a job that required almost every inch of skin - inked or not - to be covered. Not to mention that any time the first tattoo was spotted I had to explain it’s intensely saccharine meaning which inevitably made both me, and the spotter, deeply embarrassed.
But the second tattoo, which I had done at a very smart tattoo parlour in East London (more like an incredibly chic, if clinical, spa) is of a rose.
I had, over a considerable time, followed every amazing tattooist in the world on Instagram and when one announced her brief residency in London I hurled myself into her DMs. What artistry and creativity she would bring to the brief, I thought, sending her photographs of roses grown in my garden. Soft, melting spheres of petals with intense sensuality, with all the romance and mystery of a Burns poem. Unsure of the etiquette, I took along a vase of roses from my garden to give her as a marker of the occasion.
[ Roses for my tattoo artist, 14 August 2024 ]
Something probably got lost in translation. By the time she pasted the temporary tattoo of ‘her design’ onto my rib cage (another easily concealable location, just in case) it looked exactly like every basic, downloaded-from-google-images, rose tattoo you’ve ever seen. Fuck, I thought. Do I bail?
Whether out of a deep, inherent, British politeness or because I knew I’d never get around to actually booking another appointment, we went ahead.
Why a rose? Well, at the risk of sending you desperately looking for the ‘unsubscribe’ button, the rose is my favourite plant.
[ The finished rose (ouch), 15 August 2025 ]
At the time, I was vacillating over what to do next. Should I return to the Bar? Go to Princeton to do a Masters in ‘Law and Public Policy’? Try and talk my way onto a Masters in International Human Rights Law despite speaking just one language? Whatever was next, I wanted to mark my body so that I would never forget: you will find peace in the garden. Whatever the next thing was, I feared loosing the sense of peace and happiness I had found making my garden.
But there was a second meaning, too. And it was only this afternoon while hoeing in my new garden that I realised what connected the two tattoos on my body in a way I hadn’t been conscious of before: resilience.
Roses are extraordinary plants. Their varieties are myriad, and their origins ancient. Their symbolism suffuses every corner of the earth’s art and culture. A rose by any other name. My Luve is like a red, red rose. Roses are red, violets are blue. Every rose has its thorns.
But as well as all that, they are tough as nails.
I inherited only one flowerbed when I picked up the keys for the Barn a month ago. It was completely overgrown. Very mature roses were enormous and abundant, huge mounds of geraniums were perfect demilunes, and healthy Iris Germanica were in leaf, but every inch of the deep, wide bed was packed with volunteers.1
[ Preexisting bed ‘before’, Daisy Barn. 6 May 2025 ]
For a month I have left it alone, save that in the first days I was here, I hacked back all of the roses. I pruned back to a hint of bud where possible, but I wasn’t fussy. I didn’t expect them to survive their abrupt and savage haircut.
Meanwhile, I have busied myself with creating two new flowerbeds. The first runs along the ha-ha, and the second runs perpendicular, with a little ‘gateway’ gap.
It is important that I emphasise: none of this was planned. The location of the first bed came about because I needed to fill the gap beneath the fence into the sheep field. Purely practical. The second came about because I wanted to plant the two, incredible Tree Peonies I had bought as close as possible to the house so that their scent could be enjoyed.
[ The garden ‘before’, Daisy Barn. 4 April 2025 ]
[ New ha-ha bed, Daisy Barn. 6 May 2025 ]
[ New perpendicular bed, Daisy Barn. 7 May 2025 ]
Despite - as ever - making it all up as I go along, I’m rather pleased with it so far. And then in a classic fit of procrastination, this morning I decided just to start to tackle some of the tangle in the preexisting bed.
The first thing I did when I arrived at the Barn on Tuesday night was unpack the large, plastic tub I had ordered. Despite my emailing the company asking to cancel the order, there it was on the doorstep (they did finally acknowledge my email late this afternoon…).
I ordered the tub because I want to reflect the sky in a circle of water in the centre of the garden. As with many of my ideas, once it occurred I was fixated on achieving it. But I don’t want to invest a lot of money to do so, since my tenancy could end as early as September.
[ Preexisting bed, beginning of destruction, Daisy Barn. 9 May 2025 ]
[ My arms are going to be so toned, Daisy Barn. 9 May 2025 ]
After deciding that no amount of carefully arranged stones and plants would mask the hideousness of the black, plastic tub, it has been relegated to a corner beside the preexisting bed. This way, I can keep an eye on it from the patio, and see if any of the incredible choir of birds in the valley want to come and bathe, but it isn’t centre stage.2
Spending time in that corner of the garden playing with my new ‘raised pond’ I realised that I had to do something about the preexisting bed.
There is almost nothing more heartbreaking to me that a rose left unpruned, or pruned ineptly (though about 5 minutes ago, the howling sobs of my neighbour’s 7 year old daughter were audible from across the road as the sheep man came and took their three sheep away to meet their death (and then to meet the butcher)(and then to meat the plate, heh) and I felt deeply her sense of grief, and betrayal that her father (a farmer) had been so monstrous).
[ Bird bath? Dog bowl? Wildlife pond? Daisy Barn. 7 May 2025 ]
All of the roses had been left to get leggy. I have no idea for how long they’ve been growing unchecked, but they were rangy, shaggy, leggy and collapsing under their own weight. They are planted straight into clay. Unconditioned, as far as I can tell. Untended and unwatered! And yet, they were rangy, and shaggy, and leggy, and collapsing under their own weight!
I did my best to prune back to a bud, and tried (unsuccessfully) to figure out if any were climbers or ramblers just by looking (is there ANYTHING worse that seeing a climbing or rambling rose trained to grow up in a straight line? Were I in charge I would make this a capital offence).
Today, as I hacked back the many, many volunteers in the preexisting bed, I was wracked with guilt. Here I was, destroying whole ecosystems, whole universes of life-sustaining blah blah blah. Insects would be displaced, microbiomes unfed (?), everything disturbed and upset. And all for the sake of my aesthetic pleasure. A terrible thing. An act of shameful, flagrant, unconscionable ecological destruction.
[ Roses remaining in the preexisting bed, the less said about the fate of that sheep in the distance the better, Daisy Barn. 9 May 2025 ]
But as I uncovered more of the roses, I realised again how extraordinary are these plants. Unfed, unwatered, growing in rock solid clay that had contracted over time to expose whole root systems, they were still growing away. Flourishing. After my savage pruning, all are sprouting healthy, new growth.
The trouble is, I don’t know that I will leave the preexisting bed as a bed. Now that my wrath has been brought to bear, what is left is a barren wasteland with some truly strange looking roses, slightly dented demilunes of geranium, and disparate, desperate irises. I have mused on making this a cutting bed over the summer but honestly the ground is a dusty, cracked hellscape and I can’t imagine any pretty cosmos or dainty dahlia flourishing in such conditions. Not the mention the depth of the bed does not lend itself well to accessing cut flowers. Ideas on a postcard.
[ Battersea in bud, Battersea. 6 May 2025 ]
Speaking of roses, when I left Battersea on Tuesday afternoon, the borders were teetering on the brink. I have watched with bated breath as my roses have come into abundant bud, but they held out on me. Only one, single, tiny bud on my ‘Blush Noisette’ had started to unfurl her first layer of petals, like the tease of a silken strap just slipping off a bare shoulder. The others, ‘Scepter'd Isle’ and ‘Rose de Rescht’ in particular, were primed.
When I return in a few days, I imagine the whole place in an orgy of undress. The Iris Germanica will have unzipped it’s neat buds, the Philadelphus ‘Virginal’ will be shamelessly flaunting her pure, virginal blooms, the erysimum - exhausted from having been the only border plant in flower for months already - will have coughed out some final, faded flowers.
The tulips will also be well and truly over by then. Oh my goodness I have loved tulip season. I must write a post about lessons learned from my planting of 1,000 tulip bulbs.
[ Rosa ‘Blush Noisette’ starting to bloom, Battersea. 6 May 2025 ]
[ Rosa ‘Scepter'd Isle’ in bud, Battersea. 6 May 2025 ]
I also had planted about 60 ranunculus corms over the winter months and, as if seeing the tulips flagging and the roses taking their time, they are having their moment. The ‘Butterfly’ varieties are a fairly new introduction, I think, which perhaps explains why they’re coming out a bit… tatty, but even despite this they are beautiful. Their petals have an astonishing iridescence, and the colours are so vivid. I planted them in pots intending to cut them to bring inside (also because apparently they genuinely prefer to be grown in pots - something about feeling cosy and cosseted. Adorable). There should be plenty more to come over the coming couple of weeks to play around with.
Also very much on the brink of blooming are alliums and martagon lilies. Balloons and chandeliers. It’s possible that I might maybe have slightly forgotten about the many, many alliums I planted in the autumn perhaps, but I am very glad to see them nonetheless. Martagon lilies are one of my absolute, all-time favourite flowers for a border, and they are really coming up trumps at the back of my awkward, semi-shady bed.
[ The last of the tulips, Battersea. 6 May 2025 ]
The direct sown nasturtiums are coming up everywhere. It’s fine, I’m fine, it’s all good. If they start to swamp the whole garden and claim it as their own sovereign territory, I can just pull some out... right?
I planted out my home-sown sweet peas over the weekend - ‘Watermelon’, ‘Piggy Sue’ and ‘Princess Elizabeth’ - and did my best to fashion a metal obelisk into a stringy thing for them to clamber up. Last year, my sweet peas were a complete disaster (slugmageddon 2024) so I plant them out more in hope than in expectation.
Happily, I have left the garden in the extremely capable hands of professional gardeners who actually know what they are doing. Otherwise, I would have found leaving impossible. I would have sat and sat in impatient vigil, waiting for the first rose to bloom.
It is passé to say ‘weeds’
Seriously, the birds. In one 15 minute period on Wednesday morning my Merlin app picked up: Common Chiffcaff, Long-tailed Tit, Dunnock, Wood-Pigeon, European Greenfinch, House Sparrow, Common Chaffinch, Common Buzzard, Eurasian Wren, European Robin, Great Tit, Song Thrush, Eurasian Linnet, and European Stonechat.
Reviresco - love this! Sounds like a Harry Potter spell - beautiful rose bud pics so full of promise!
OMG I went to Selfridges too, to get my nose pierced, I wanted a proper job done, when the lady used an ear gun with a butterfly back I kicked off and said it was the wrong thing to use and got it for free. I expected better tbh. Piercing wasn't really a thing back then, occasionally you would see a student with a nose stud, but punks went all out, so you did them yourself. couple of ice cubes and a sterile safety pin! Yes I still have at least 4 homemade ones :) I did enjoy your planting list and pics too xx