Garden Studios

IT WAS special somehow – the close proximity to the River Wharfe and Middleton Woods imbued it with a type of magic.

It had a front garden which was nothing greater than a square of grass (lawn is quite too grand a word) surrounded by a narrow border only a few feet wide. It’ll have won no prizes inside the design stakes, but each May it entranced me for one simple reason – granddad planted his borders with wallfowers.

The names remain with me still: ‘Cloth of Gold’, ‘Vulcan’ and ‘Fire King’. But for all their brilliant colours – bright yellow, orange and rich, deep crimson – it’s the fragrance I remember so well; rich and sweet, a type of dolly-mixture fragrance, and when your nose is simply three feet from the bottom the intensity is unforgettable.

Sadly, few folk bother with wallfowers today, but we actually should, for they may be trouble-free plants which, especially when planted with tulips, provide a spring display that has a double whammy of both scent and colour, not provided by tulips alone.

In those far of days, granddad would raise his wallfowers in rows at the nearby allotment, sowing the seed in May, transplanting the young wallfowers to a much broader spacing in July after which digging them as much as plant out within the garden come September and October.

You can sometimes still buy them today in nurseries, garden centres and greengrocers’ shops, tied into bundles of ten or 20. They’re going to look a little bit sad – even sadder when you’ve got planted them – for the leaves will remain wilted and foppy for per week or so. But soaked overnight in a bucket of water, puddled in, and encouraged by mild, damp autumn weather, they’re going to soon pick up and provides their the whole following April and can.

Mostly nowadays they’re sold as container-grown plants. This avoids your entire wilting and the unhappy appearance, however it does lead them to dearer.

Whichever state yow will discover them in, plant them a foot apart and plant your tulips between them afterwards, choosing varieties which are as a minimum 18in (45cm) tall in order that their flowers will open above those of the wallfowers.

Mixed wallfowers are offered more often than single colours, and yet single colours offer the foremost impact when planted with a contrastingly coloured tulip. An edging of forget-me-nots will give the entire planting a sense of being surrounded by water or sky.

So don’t spurn them; plant your wallfowers now for a spring to bear in mind.