I don’t know about you but I frequently have what I call Desert Island Discs moments in the garden – when I spot a plant or a flower and think, “Yes, you really are my favourite and I couldn’t do without you.”
A lot of these moments seem to happen in spring – probably due to gratitude for brightness and colour after a long, dreary, winter.
But there is one spring flower that I would have on my desert island whatever time of the year it flowered thanks to its delicacy, beauty and grace. It is the snakeshead fritillary – Fritillaria meleagris – with which residents of Oxford will be well familiar thanks to its willingness to grow wild in the meadows by the river there.
I cannot boast sheets and sheets of it at home but I have enough snakeheads to make me drool each spring when they push up through the rough turf at the back of the house.
At first they are hard to spot among the greensward but eagle eyes will spy the bashful arched flower stems emerging soon, with their buds – the shape of an adder’s head – dangling between the narrow, sword-like leaves.
Eventually they will fatten and their patterning will become visible – a delicate chequerboard effect unusual in nature. Tessellation is the posh word for it and it is quite exquisite with the flowers a shaky shade of plum purple or a creamy white. To see them nodding gently in every passing breeze is one of spring’s greatest pleasures.
Of course, you really need to plant the tiny, scaly bulbs in autumn, in any patch of ground that is moist enough never to dry out – that is their preference.
But if you can’t provide those conditions then you will simply have to commit to an annual planting scheme to bulk up the numbers. The bulbs are inexpensive enough and the pleasure you will gain more than repays the chore.
And if you want them now? Well, nurseries and garden centres generally have the foresight to pot up snakeshead fritillaries in autumn and sell them in flower in spring.
Buy some and enjoy them in pots and troughs at close quarters and, as the flowers fade, plant them out in the garden – in grass or in bare pockets of earth in beds and borders – setting them slightly deeper than they grow in their pots.
You should get another showing next year and if you make a note to plant up even more bulbs this coming autumn you can join me on my desert island!
Don’t miss Alan’s gardening column today and Tip Of The Day every weekday in the Daily Express. For more information on his range of gardening products, visit alantitchmarsh.com.
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