One Pot

Lots & Lots of Phlox

The pups and I arrived back at Daisy Barn at lunchtime, just in time to enjoy the last of the sweltering heat before Zeus sent thunder rolling over us. Cool relief came, but no rain.

I have spent most of the time we’ve been back (minus the 90mins I spent driving to and from the nearest Apple store (Cribbs Causeway - the horror) to replace the laptop charger I had left in London…) sitting beside the pot of Phlox ‘Clouds of Perfume’.

Not two metres away are pots of the most staggering historic tulips. I moved them from London to Gloucestershire and then back to London and then back to Gloucestershire… In short, I am (now famously) tulip obsessed and I didn’t want to miss a single moment of bloom. And yet despite the Phlox’s relative modesty beside these storied, mania-inducing bulbs, the Phlox has stolen my heart completely.

The flowers (I’m sure in no small part thanks to my aunt and uncle very kindly coming over to water them mid-week - thank you, thank you, thank you!) have doubled since our last visit. They are clusters of the dearest blue-lilac stars, so delicate, each like a perfect paper cutout.

But of course, it is their scent - oh, how I wish I could share it with you - that has driven me mad with passion for this sweet little pot.

[ yes, that ratty old chaise is propped up on a pile of books - always see the chair in person before you buy it ]

Over the course of the afternoon I have come to an important realisation. Were I to be set adrift - exiled to that fabled desert island - and allowed only one plant, it would be Phlox ‘Clouds of Perfume’.

I am not madly ordering more of it online so as to add more and more to the garden (though I must and I will) because this one pot is perfect. It is perfect. What else in the world can be said to be really, truly perfect but this?

It’s habit is perfect; bushing and reaching and lolling and spilling from it’s pot. It’s flowers are perfect; not showy, but exquisite. It’s scent is perfect; oh, how I wish I could share it with you!!

If I had a wedding in May (which I did once but let’s not talk about that now) I would simple fill the space with pots of this Phlox. Big pots, small pots, every shape and size. The whole place would simply and absolutely stink! It would overwhelm with the scent of pure heaven.

If I die in May, surround my deathbed with pots and pots of this Phlox. As I sink back into nature - toes and fingers cooling to soil, arms and breasts and legs melting to stream, eyes and ears and tongue and heart and bones and hair and eyelash becoming again fertile earth - let this be the scent that anoints me.

If, as a somewhat surprising garden ‘influencer’, I persuade you of anything let it be this - go and stick your nose into a pot of Phlox ‘Clouds of Perfume’. You won’t regret it. Park a single pot of it beside your front door and be taken aback each hurried, rush past by it’s fragrance. I will never (willingly) be without a pot of it ever again.

The soundtrack of this writing was a song thrush twittering away. Taken together, all in, with the dogs and this place and the sunshine and the bird song and the phlox and the gentle baas and bleats, and the peace and the lack of anxiety and the writing and all of you? Well, fuck. And I only was overwhelmed with missing David and cried twice. Wait, no, make that three times. Why the fuck isn’t he here?