Smell of Turkish delight at The Chelsea Physic Garden
When I worked as a volunteer at the Chelsea Physic garden one of the first jobs they gave me was to take cuttings of their collection of pelargoniums. I found it quite an eye opener or ‘scent-sation’ you might say. ‘Attar of Roses’ was my favourite reminding me of the rare occasions I have eaten real Turkish delight with it rose flavour and scent infused into the icing sugar. But there were other scents too such as orange, old spice, peppermint and other smells I could not name but seemed somehow familiar.
Eating roses has always seemed a very sensual act to me. Having watched ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ I sought out some rose-petal jam that they sold on Edware Road and made Tita’s famous dish of ‘quail with rose-petal sauce’ for dinner. Luckily it did not have the same erotic effect on my family.
Speaking about the romance of food makes me think of the BBC production of Brideshead revisited where Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder share a box of strawberries and a bottle of Chateaux Peryraguey under an oak tree on a cloudless day in June. You could not hope for a better love-letter to the English countryside than that….
Weed or desirable plant
Its always bizarre what people, including myself, will buy from the garden centre. The truth is that very little information is given about what a plant will be like. Most of the time a purchase is based on how pretty the flowers of such and such a plant are without any consideration for what situation or soil a plant may like or its vigour. So for example if I was to dig up the bindweed on my allotment and potted it up with a small picture of its white ‘piss-pot’ flowers(Maybe I wouldn’t use that term!) and price it at £6.95 stating ‘vigorous, hardy perennial climber with beautiful pure white flowers’ how many people would buy it!?!
Lady Chatterley’s lover
I’ve always hoped that I might be someone’s bit of rough like Lady Chatterley’s gamekeeper friend. Unfortunately, I’m an ex-public schoolboy so perhaps that’s why the hope of grabbing hold of some creamy-white thighs with my muddied hands having brushed off the grass cuttings is not really a realistic fantasy!
Anyway, A few years ago I was a little too honest about this fantasy when at an unnamed country house with its own picturesque cricket ground, I asked my fellow cricketers if there were any ‘Lady Chatterley types hanging about.’ Only to notice that her Ladyship herself was a few feet away with her husband (presumably listening to every word I said)!
As you can imagine tea over the cucumber sandwiches in the Great Hall was a slightly awkward affair as I desperately tried to avoid making eye contact with her.
Post-script-The illustration of Lady Chatterley in her game-keepers cottage is included as the featured image for this article and there are 17 beautiful illustrations included in the book drawn by the talented Anastasia Antonova.
A gardener out of this world 