Anne here, taking a wander through the garden and considering the way so many flowers and fragrances evoke other times, other people. Many of the plants in my garden have come from cuttings or plant divisions or gifts from other people's gardens, and as well as bringing their own beauty and scent to my garden, they evoke memories of those people, some of whom are long gone.
My daphne is a little bit sick at the moment, and I'm very anxious about it. It grew from a cutting descended from a cutting taken from the daphne that grew in my grandmother's garden many years ago. My mum saved the plant and took cuttings and gave them to friends and family. I adore the scent of daphne, and now every time I smell that divine smell, I think of Nan and Mum. Let's hope I can cure my plant of whatever ails it.
My gardenia came from a cutting from the mother of one of my oldest school friends. She had a wonderful gardenia bush that flowered prolifically every year.
I must have mentioned at some stage how much I loved the scent of gardenias because she never forgot it. Her husband was a very important man, but each year when the gardenia came into flower, she'd make up a beautiful little packet of them, sealed in cellophane, and make him detour on his way to work to drop it off at my place — even when I was living in a shabby student share-house. My gardenia is from a cutting from her plant, and each year when it flowers, I think of Winnie.
My godmother had a lovely garden, but she liked things to be very neat and tidy. One of the banes of her garden were the bluebells that would pop up all over the garden each year. She loved the blue, but "Oh they're messy plants," she'd mutter. Not only would they appear in beds where she hadn't planted them, their leaves, once the flowering had finished, looked so untidy, just lying there.
I was visiting one time when she was ripping out bluebell bulbs, grumping away, and I filled a supermarket bag. She warned me that I'd rue the day, but I never have. I like a messy garden, and I've planted them in the various houses I've lived in since, and I dug up some each time I moved. This photo isn't of my garden, but of a friend's. Her bluebells are much longer established than mine, and put on a glorious show every year.
One of my neighbors has a fuchsia very like one that my grandmother had. Hers was near the back door and being an evil child, I loved to pop those fat white buds and watch the purply-red flowers with the little ballerina feet emerge. And of course if I was ever caught — and I was, several times — Nan would read me the riot act, and there would be some kind of punishment. Now whenever I pass that kind of old-fashioned fuchsia, I still itch to pop them — but I don't. Nan would be proud. Maybe.
When I was twelve, my elder sister got married and in her bouquet she had creamy frangipani (plumeria) flowers. Being from the colder southern part of Australia, I'd never seen them before— they're more of a tropical plant — but I fell in love with them and their delicate scent. Ever since I've tried to grow them. Only once have I been blessed with a flower — but hope springs eternal.
I'm lucky to have a garden, I know, but even those who don't have a garden can have strong feelings about flowers — you don't have to grow them to love them. They say scent is the most powerfully evocative of the senses.
Are there any flowers or plants that you associate with other people or other times? Do you have a favorite flower or plant? What are its associations for you?