And it is of Hollyhocks I now must speak….

My parents were not great gardeners. But we inherited houses that came with gardens that had been designed with some care. There were hydrangeas that skirted the entire house and deep red geraniums in window boxes. Long stretches of daffodils under the weeping willows. Rockeries with small tufts of flowers all down the right side of the lawn. And then the garden devolved into raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes. Curved greenhouses for tomatoes and glass boxes for cucumbers. Then across the stream there was the fiefdom of my welsh grandfather. Who made rows and rows of neat shallow trenches laid out with string in military precision that held broad beans and potatoes and wigwam structures for runner beans and peas.

But truly, flowers were never the opera stars in our gardens. Everything of beauty survived by luck, the daffodils just kept coming back. The hydrangeas just flowered despite being driven over a few times by my first boyfriend who was not a great driver. Sorry Paul. The roses bloomed and bloomed again, but there was no grafting or specific pruning, they just kept giving these fragrant teacups of colour despite how much they were ignored.

We didn’t have cut flowers in vases. I don’t remember any house plants. There were books and Buddha’s and lamps made by my father in woodwork classes. There were bowls of oranges ( for our breakfast juice) and apples fallen from trees for our anytime. Living now in Santa Monica, I always have flowers on my kitchen table, in my living room and upstairs in the bedrooms and bathroom because for me now it is the fastest way to feel I am celebrating the luck in my life. But it wasn’t always so. I remember living in London and having this sense that cutting flowers was not allowing them to grow their full life. It went hand in hand with my not eating Granny Smith apples with the cape symbol on them because my not buying a pound of apples was really going to have a difference on apartheid. It was my friend Geoff, who drapes flowers like an artist into any vase, who looked at me scathingly as I spouted my concern for the rights of the flowers. That look was enough.

My garden doesn’t have many flowers, I am always surprised when the occasional dahlia pops up or the amaryllis I had forgotten was in that pot at the bottom by the mermaid, shoots forth another exotic bloom, I am thrilled however by the quince blossoms, that couldn’t be more delicate, the passion flower which only lasts a day or so and is so complicated it needs an engineer to dissect it. And the various kinds of scented geranium that cover the ground, peppermint, chocolate, rose. The purple rose that survives despite getting in the way, the French lavender and the brilliant African blue basil, that provides a playground for the bees. Gardens here in England are not all beautiful. Some are over tailored. Some are full of weeds. Some have pavers and couple of deck chairs. Lots of privet and boxwood. There are books published, massive flowers shows in Chelsea and Hampton Court. I would not dream of adding my naive comments on those.

But I can talk of the glorious and slightly insane Hollyhock. “Alcea Rosea” it seems from the Mallow family of plants. And it is everywhere here in this summer month. Native to Europe and Asia. it shoots up so tall and leggy like a wayward teenager, so it is often found propped up against walls and fences.

But sometimes it will emerge in a solo performance waving around some three or four foot tall it’s bright flowers demanding your attention. There is no smell. The blooms shrivel on the stem and drop off. Madame Hollyhock, she is blowsy and big like an opera singer with only a few high notes…but Lordy, are they high. And Lordy , do they give me pleasure in these July days…..