The Multipurpose Usage of Flowers

We value flowers for their beauty and looks, but they have much more to offer than just their attractive appearances. Flowers play a very important role in our ecosystem. They provide food and habitat for beneficial insects. They attract insects and birds, which serve as pollinators for the plant itself. The flower itself produces seeds, which are then pollinated by birds or insects. It is a form of symbiotic relationship. Without insects or birds to help pollinate flowers, plants would have no way of reproducing to create new flowers or growth. Insects and birds utilize the plants or flowers for their own growth and also help keep the surrounding ecosystem of flowers well maintained and healthy by keeping away predators. The bugs and birds that the flowers attract also help keep other harmful or "bad" bugs away, such as bugs which may eat or destroy other plants. All plants produce some type of flower at some point of their growth and flowers provide new plant life which help keep the ecosystem growing as well as help sustain local insects and birds. If flowers are cut down or destroyed before pollination, there is a high chance of their deaths. And in the absence of flowers and plants, local wildlife will also vanish in that area since they would have no food.

Some flowers are also good to eat and some of them can also be used medicinally. Flowers have been used in medicine as potent remedies for thousands of years. Nature is an incredible chemist, and for ages herbs and flowers have been used as medicines in many societies and cultures throughout the world. Flowers are still important in herbal medicine and complementary therapies today. In aromatherapy, flower essences dissolved in oil are applied externally, to calm or stimulate the mind and body. Five of the most common flowers with curative properties are:

1) Foxglove: They are a useful treatment for cardiovascular problems such as atrial fibrillation and heart failure.

2) Lily of the valley: The flower is used to treat heart conditions and dropsy. During the First World War, Lily of the valley was also used to help soldiers recover from the effects of gas poisoning.

3) Rose: They have anti-inflammatory properties and are useful for relieving joint pain. Rose syrup is also been given to patients to treat coughs and colds.

4) Lavender: The flower has been used to aid sleep for centuries. It also helps digestion, relieves flatulence and acts as an antiseptic.

5) Chamomile: They are used to calm anxiety and treat headaches. They act as an anti-spasmodic for such problems as stomach cramps and indigestion.

Flowers are very important for humans with their multipurpose usage. They also play an integral role in many celebrations and festivals such as weddings, anniversaries, Easter and Valentine's Day. Flowers are also popular as gifts and they are always in huge demand. Many florists have extended their services online in order to reach out to a maximum number of customers and nowadays people can send flowers to Mumbai or any other city in quick time. With these internet florists and gifts delivery services, it has now become relatively easy to arrange an online flower delivery in Mumbai for any special occasion.

Tasty tulips

The colder, crisper weather heralds the start of the tulip planting season. Verdant green leaves and luscious blooms provide a visual feast early in the year. But tulips are also food for the stomach and their petals make a cool, crisp and colourful addition to the salad bowl. (But note: some people suffer allergic reactions to tulips, so proceed with caution).

Tasting broadly of sweet lettuce but with a peppery kickback, tulip petals range in flavour from grassy - think Romaine - via earthy and and creamy - think butterhead - to bold, hot rocket. Tossed with early salad leaves, also sown now, they are a glamorous, blowsy and dazzling colour bonanza, and all with the crunch of an upright cos.

The best tulips for eating fall into three groups. They are scented; fragrance contributes heavily to flavour, they have bite and texture, breaking and crunching noisily when eaten, and they are beautiful.

Single, early tulips tend to be the most scented. They taste like peas with the perfume adding a floral note. 'Couleur Cardinal' is an intense crimson-red single with a plummy sheen and a sweet, fruity fragrance.
Wonderful together in a pot are hot orange 'Veronique Samson', 'Ballerina' and 'Orange Favourite'.

Orange tulips tend to have the most fragrance. 'Veronique Samson' is a flaming orange single with a rose scent. Lily flowered 'Ballerina' smells heady and sweet like sherbet and 'Orange Favourite', which is later and double, smells of freesias. 'City of Vancouver', a late single, has large, creamy petals that taste of violets. With all these tulips the taste is predominantly sweet.

Larger petals have a stiffer texture and more crunch. 'Menton' is a single early with crisp petals and flowers the size of a goose egg that provide an exhilarating snap. The shell pink colour belies a strong spicy kick similar to mizuna or rocket. It has a pleasing brittleness similar to iceberg lettuce.

Double peony and parrot types are more chewy and so can be used coarsely chopped or torn. Intensely velvety 'Rococo' is scarlet-flamed, puckered with bright red and deeply fringed. It has a subtle, fruity fragrance. Use it to make a sultry salad with lamb's lettuce, red cabbage and chicory or roast peppers, squash and pecorino. 'Creme Upstar' is a pale and creamy double peony type. It looks and tastes fantastic with the mixed bright green leaves of oakleaf lettuce, newly emergent sorrel, mint and feta.

Cool and ethereal or deep and dramatic, colour adds intrigue and excitement and turns a bowl of simple leaves into a showstopping lunch. Try dusky 'Bruine Wimpel' with fresh spinach, pancetta and hazelnuts, or 'Spring Green' with rocket and pea tips.

There is also something to be said for picking and scattering what you are already growing. Fresh, organic and direct from the garden, red tulips are the sweetest. I grow 'Tambour Maitre', a rich red with smoky crimson hue has the sweetness and bite of a little gem lettuce. White are the most spicy, try 'Pax' or 'Purissima' for heat. Yellows such as the elegant 'Sapporo' are sulphurous like broccoli with the unobtrusive bitterness of Reine de Glace lettuce or chicory. The darker purple and near blacks, 'Havran' and 'Jan Reus' share the clear, sweet brightness and the pleasing brittleness of an iceberg lettuce with an initial tang and a sweeter aftertaste.
Salad leaves for winter sowing and picking

The flavour of the leaf varies according to the age of the leaf and the time of year. Cold weather has a sweetening effect, while maturity makes flavour more pronounced.

Plantwatch: The pharmacy flourishing in gardens and fields

Plants famous for their drugs are out in flower. Perhaps most spectacular is the brilliant red field poppy, making a stunning splash of colour this summer. This common poppy has a type of opiate that was long used for mild pain relief for toothache, earache and sore throats, as well as a mild sedative. But far better known for opiates is the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, its lilac-coloured flowers infamous from the illegal drugs trade in Afghanistan. But the opium poppy is also grown for pharmaceutical morphine in parts of southern and eastern England, where the soil and climate are just right. Last summer saw a record harvest and the quality of morphine produced now provides some 50% of all the morphine used in the UK. Although the poppies are grown under a Home Office licence, they are no good for making illicit drugs because the variety grown in England needs a good deal of sophisticated refining to make into morphine.

Meadowsweet was the source of another important drug. This plant grows in damp places and is now in bloom with frothy white flower heads with a heady sweet fragrance. Meadowsweet has an especially proud history because it was used for relieving headaches thanks to a substance called salicylic acid. In 1897 these painkiller properties inspired the chemical synthesis of aspirin – named after the plant’s old scientific name, Spiraea.

Foxgloves are best known for their stunning bell-shaped flowers, now in bloom in tall spikes. But the entire plant is also highly poisonous and contains digoxin and digitoxin, important drugs for treating heart conditions.

Alys Fowler: elderberries

‘Elderberries are an essential meal for birds, too.’ Photograph: Alamy

The slow, graceful fall of elderflowers to berries is the last march of summer. By the time they are dropping, summer is closing up for another year. They blush purple, then eventually darken to a purple black that signifies that summer is finally over. There may well be warm days to come, with perfect golden light that seduces with lingering summer kisses, but the nights tell us otherwise.

Elderberries are rich in vitamin C and antioxidants; the juice makes a wonderful winter tonic if gently heated with a hefty amount of sugar. Don’t over-boil or none of the good stuff will be left (but don’t drink it raw, either: it will make you nauseous). You can also use the berries for wine and jam. They are an essential meal for birds, too; starlings and blackbirds, in particular, seem fond of them. Although the flowers and fruit are edible, the other parts are poisonous, and the leaves smell particularly foul when crushed.

The common elder (Sambucus nigra), is in the family adoxaceae. The whole family used to be clumped in with the honeysuckle family, but boffins have decided elder needs its own gang. This tree is an opportunist, turning up anywhere the berries are dropped by birds. It tends to become increasingly scraggy in shape with age, and most people view it as a weedy species that’s not suitable for the garden. However, in the mid-18th century it was a much prized hedge shrub, planted in double rows and elaborately pruned into a diamond pattern. Its fast-growing nature makes it ideal for such things. For those who like a little creative weaving, perhaps this practice could be reinstated? It would at least be prettier than bright orange fence panels.

Perhaps even that is not enough of a hard sell to persuade most to put an elder in their garden, but there are a number of pretty ones. S. nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Gerda’ (also known as ‘Black Beauty’) was bred in the 1980s. It has rich, dark purple foliage and brilliant pink flowers that make a wonderful elderflower cordial or champagne. In 2003, the breeders upped their game and produced S. ‘Eva’, often sold as ‘Black Lace’, a cut-leaved form that has deeply dissected leaves and creamy pink flowers.

With both of these, the best foliage colour comes when they are grown in full sun. Too much shade, and the plant will start to revert to greenish-bronze foliage. If dark-coloured foliage isn’t your thing, then S. nigra f. laciniata has the same fern-like foliage as ‘Eva’, but with green leaves and white flowers.

Finally, one for those who have limited space: S. ‘Black Tower’ is a dark-leaved form with an upright habit. If you don’t want it to tower too much, cut it back to its base in spring, and it will reflush with new growth.

Gardens: primula and proper

The ditch which runs from a spring in the fields above us forms a wet crease between two of our fields. The land drains steeply into it from both sides and in places you can easily lose your wellies. The farmer before us did little with it other than spray out the brambles, which in our time here have seized their moment. This winter we made the big move to clear the length of it to reveal what lies underneath. Peeling back the undergrowth unearthed a series of cascades. They drop and gurgle from one level to the next and where the land falls more gently, the ditch runs in rubbly shallows. You couldn’t have animated it more beautifully.

 The elegant Primula elatior ‘Victoriana Gold Lace’. Photograph: John Richmond/Alamy

For a short while the water was visible, but it is closing over with the vegetation that was waiting in the wings. A giant primitive horsetail is already celebrating and so too is the deadly water dropwort that looks so much like watercress. We have ragged robin, campion, meadowsweet and angelica to look forward to, but the first plants to reveal

They have obviously been more than happy under the cage of the brambles, but this spring they have revelled in the light. They’re one of my favourite plants and since we have been here I have been dividing them to see if I can set off a number of colonies. They are easy plants if they have damp at the root and shade in the summer. In the garden they might be among summer perennials or beneath deciduous shrubs.

The primrose crosses readily – the parent may well be a cowslip or, in more gardened areas, a polyanthus. Many polyanthus have been bred to extremes with size of flower and strength of colour, but there are selections that retain an elegance. ‘Gold Lace’ is one of my favourites, with an almost black base and a piping of gold lining. The ‘Cowichan’ strain are like jewels, with dark coppery foliage and flowers that range from deep royal blue to ruby-red and burgundy. They were bred by Barnhaven, a wonderful primula nursery which is no longer in existence, but you can still seek them via Plant Finder.

 The elegant Primula elatior ‘Victoriana Gold Lace’. Photograph: John Richmond/Alamy

As child I had a Barnhaven catalogue, which in retrospect was written in thoroughly purple prose. The words had me lost in an exotic world where the plants were painted vividly in every detail. I will desist from such descriptions now, other than to say that as the primroses and polyanthus fade, the exotic bog primulas from Asia come into their own. Primula florindae, the giant Himalayan cowslip, is the most dramatic, rising to be more than 2ft tall in early summer. The candelabra primula, so named for its ascending whirls of flower, which open in sequence up the length of silver-dusted stems, are perhaps at their sensational best when planted en masse in a damp position. I am using rust orange ‘Inverewe’ and magenta Primula pulverulenta this year at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The bog primulas like the same ground as marsh marigold and are happiest in the damp marginal areas of a pond. They will self seed if competition is not too strong.

Gardens: dianthus, prettiest of pinks

Just for frills: Dianthus carthusianorum. Photograph: Alamy

It all began with a Sunday afternoon trip to Special Plants in Wiltshire. Being close by, it is an easy excursion. I can even walk if I am committed to the fact that I will probably have to drive back later to collect my booty. This time it was Dianthus ‘Elizabethan’ that broke my resolve. You can imagine the flowers appearing as a detail in a Dutch old master painting: pale chalk white with rounded edges to the petals, just outlined in carmine pink and an almost black blotch to the centre.

Four years on, I know the plant much better and forgive it its ranginess. Out of season it is easy to think it might not be worth it, but come early summer it galvanises. The long-stemmed flowers spill over their neighbours, and the scent of cloves is enough to perfume a room if you pick enough for a posy. ‘Elizabethan’ was joined quite quickly by about 10 varieties that I picked from the Allwoods website. I chose single- flowered varieties and have by a process of elimination or failure reduced the little trial to a handful.

The Cheddar pink, our native dianthus of limestone outcrops, dwindled and died on me without flowering. Despite my inclusion of sharp grit in the compost for drainage and keeping the pots in bright, dry positions, our Somerset moisture proved too much. Dianthus plumarius is diminutive but delightful with its fringed petals. I have jettisoned a number that were just too pretty. They would have looked lovely in a cottagey garden but I wanted the pinks either to pack a punch with bright, clear colour or to be a little mysterious neon.

I have grown ‘Neon Star’ in a pot for 10 years. The blue-green foliage fills the pot in a perfect dome when not in flower, and then erupts in short-stemmed flowers. They are brighter than a campion, eye-catching and perfumed. A potful will flower for a good six weeks.

Though not such a strong grower, ‘Solomon’ has the darkest ruby red base and frilled mauve fringes. ‘Unique’ has a plum base and bright pink flares, two to each petal.

The biennial Dianthus barbatus, or Sweet William, is easily raised from seed like wallflowers, sown direct in June and then transplanted in the autumn. They last a good three years. I use ‘Sooty’ through the filigree foliage of Anthriscus ‘Raven’s Wing’. Cut them back immediately after flowering and you might get a diminished but welcome second crop in the second half of the summer.

I am hoping the perennial Dianthus cruentus seeds about in my gravel garden. The tight green rosette needs light to the base, so grow it with low groundcovers such as Acaena. The flowers are bunched together tightly, each a dramatic red with dark calyxes. The long stems of Dianthus carthusianorum are finer still. To my complete delight, I saw these growing in a sunny south-facing meadow at the Inner Temple gardens in London. I already have seedlings in my frame ready and waiting for release.

Alys Fowler: looking after plants in the holidays

 

‘The trick with indoor plants is to slow growth down so they need very little care while you’re away.’ Photograph: Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley

I am going away. I am going to sit by the edge of a lake and drink Aperol. I am going to stand under mighty trees and wonder aloud about the men who planted them. I am going to marvel at intact 16th-century frescoes and peer behind the backs of fountains to better understand Renaissance hydraulics. While I am away, little things will grow, the sun will shine and everything will need watering.

If no one is around to water, or those around may be erratic (at best) at the job, then the only thing is to take matters into your own hands.

The trick with indoor plants is to slow growth down so they need very little care. Water all your houseplants well, then line the bath or sink with a thick wad of damp newspaper. Place your plants on this, so they remain damp and humid. Make sure they are away from direct light, and when you return your plants will have sat doing very little. You can leave them like this for a week. If you are going away for longer, put the plants on top of bricks and fill the bath to just above the top of the bricks. If the plants are in terracotta pots, capillary action will take care of watering for you.

You can make a smaller version of this with a washing-up bowl and a roasting tray (or something with similarly high sides). Turn the bowl upside down and lay over some capillary matting or an old towel. Drape one end of the towel in the water-filled tray. The plants will remain moist as long as the water lasts. This works just as well outside for young plug plants and seedlings.

For larger pots outdoors, you can either pray to the rain god or hedge your bets. If you can move all your pots to a shady corner, this will slow down respiration and thus growth. If you can’t do this, some makeshift shade netting, such as lace curtains, will work as well.

Make sure all your pots have saucers, so that if and when they are watered, at least the whole pot soaks up the excess. Also mulch the top of the pots with bark mulch or even just homemade compost to conserve moisture. You can make a temporary water feeder by recycling plastic water bottles (as large as you have). Fill the bottle with water and make a very small hole in the cap. Bury the bottle upside down in the pot and the water will slowly leak out, as long as the hole is tiny; too big and it will run through immediately.

If your pots are full of vegetables that don’t much like a week off watering, bribe your friends. Let them harvest whatever is available while you are away, or give them a cut of the future bounty. The more they pick things like runner beans and courgettes, the more there will be for you when you return.

The towpath is alive with the essence of summer

Florets from the saucer-sized elder flower. Forage now for elderflower cordial, or leave for elderberry wine later. Photograph: Yon Marsh Natural History/Alamy

The sky is a speedwell blue as I walk along the towpath of the Wheelock canal, which runs parallel to the river Weaver. Bottle-green and crimson narrowboats decorated with pots of geraniums and horseshoes pootle by. There are dandelions bold as brass in the grass. Cow parsley, or Queen Anne’s Lace, frills the bank. Peacock butterflies alight on a purple buddleia growing out of a stone wall flecked with burnt-orange and pale-grey lichen, showing their eye-spots.

I pass under a bridge and hear the rush of water from the lock; out the other side, an explosion of swallows alternating royal-blue backs and scarlet throats as they skim the water for insects. There is a female mallard, five balls of golden-brown fluff paddling furiously to keep up with her.

A bolt of turquoise-amber. I am always surprised how small the kingfisher is, but what an impression it makes, a jewel of a bird. Greek mythology tells that if a dead kingfisher is hung by twine it acts as a weather cock, turning its beak in the direction of the wind. There is little wind today, just a breeze wafting lines of washing in the yards of the cottages backing onto the canal.

Porches on the Towpath: bike trail right out the door!

A white horse grazes in a field of buttercups; further on, cows with treacle eyes chew grass, pausing to gawp at families in the nearby beer garden, pale flanks rising and falling, ears and tails twitching, the occasional soft fall of muck and moo.

There are cyclists, joggers, dog walkers and a gang of small boys on scooters. “Watch out for the stingers!” one cries, as they whizz past. A patch of nettles flare like green flames. Dog roses, pink as bubble-gum with sunshine-yellow stamens, wander wantonly over the hawthorn hedge, scrambling into trees.

Then I see the saucer-sized, creamy-white elderflowers, the essence of summer. Celtic lore has it that fairies will appear to those who stand under an elder tree on Midsummer’s Eve.

I think about foraging – canal pathways can be excellent places to look for wild food. Yet I leave the flowers; there will be berries for wine, come autumn time.

The Unfairness of Flowers

I would not hesitate a moment to sculpt this fine material and bring it to the opulence it naturally bears inside. This shape, like all sculptures, exists within the block itself prior to it having been carved, chiseled, and illuminated by knowing hands which seek to shed the darkness that shrouds lights in needs of attention.
How many thousands of lights that have gone undiscovered…and yet again, the gems that have had the opportunity to be known. Such as Giotto di Bondone, but a boy drawing pictures of the sheep he was shepherding when found by the Florentine painter Cimabue. Henceforth, his life was never the same for with the guidance from someone understanding, he managed to find not only the fruit of his talent, but also a name for himself in history.

Henceforth, there have things both lost and gained in this game of chance but had it not been for this possibility of a negative, these grand positives would have never come about. Sure, it may bring forth the question of fairness…but is fairness really a first and foremost concern given the other qualities that may be lost with it? That being greatness, of course.
A flower, totally unfair, with beauty like no other. Yet she understands these grave tragedies and majestic occurrences of life.
Of course, a dramatic reading of flowers and how they influence us is always fun, it keeps us aware of why they are so purposeful in our lives, for the next time you may be interested in using our online wholesale flower seller shop, with deliveries across the US nation, and including Canada.

Gardens: what to do this week

Tidy this You’ve held back the secateurs all winter in the interests of wildlife, but now that those once frost-rimed seedheads are mushy, it’s time to clear up. You don’t have to cart it away: leave plant material on the soil where it drops for an instant, no-labour mulch.
Visit this Fed up with your usual weekend haunts? Seek inspiration from the National Gardens Scheme. Go to ngs.org.uk, plug in your postcode and the distance you’re prepared to travel, and up pops a list of gardens of all types and sizes open to the public.
Plant this If your lavender is looking woody and sparse, it’s time to invest in some new plants. This collection of 15 plug plants features five ‘Little Lady’, a compact 35cm x 35cm English lavender with pale blue flowers; five ‘Kew Red’, a French lavender with cherry red flowers topped with pink ‘ears’; and five French lavender ‘Papillon’, with lilac purple bracts. Both French lavenders have a height and spread of 60cm. To order the collection for £21.97 (all orders include free UK mainland p&p), call 0330 333 6856, quoting ref GU295, or go to our readers’ offers page. Dispatch March-April 2015.

Gardens: a celebration of sweet violets

fter nature’s winter palette of grey and brown, I crave the first signs of life, colour, anything that gives me a hint spring is on its way. The tiny flowers of the sweet violet (Viola odorata), one of the earliest of our native plants to bloom, do just that. They’re not showy blooms; you’ll have to be sharp-eyed to spot them, hunkered down among the leaf litter of a deciduous woodland or tucked away at the base of a stout ancient hedge. Getting a whiff of their sweet perfume is trickier, requiring crouching down on all fours. Their diminutive size and delicacy belies the fact that these brave blooms appear when our weather is at its most fickle, from late winter through to May (we’re more likely to experience snow at Easter than at Christmas, according to the Met Office).
Sweet violets are steeped in history and folklore, prized for their fragrance and medicinal uses. Lauded by the ancient Greeks and adored by Napoleon and the Empress Joséphine, their popularity, particularly as a cut flower, reached a height in Victorian and Edwardian times. Dorset, Devon and Cornwall were centres of sweet violet growing and production peaked in the 1930s. You can still see the remains of walled flower fields, known as quillets, on the western tip of Cornwall, where violets were cultivated to send to Covent Garden market. In France, the quest for new varieties with strong perfume, long stems and large flowers led to a craze in plant breeding.
Catching a glimpse of them in the wild is rarer today due to habitat loss. Grow them alongside snowdrops, wood anemones, primroses and lily of the valley to create a piece of spring woodland of your own. And, if you fancy something that packs more punch, or like to grow cut flowers for your home (the best and easiest way to appreciate their perfume), there are a host of stunning cultivars, with larger flowers held on longer stems in a variety of colours.

How to grow violets

Recreate the conditions they love in the wild. They need winter and spring sunshine but summer shade, so the ideal spots are under deciduous trees and shrubs. They used to be grown commercially in orchards, providing fruit growers with a spring crop of blooms to sell before the autumn harvest of apples and pears. As long as the ground doesn’t dry out, grow among herbaceous perennials, since any summer planting will provide sufficient shade.
Sweet violets thrive in moist but well-drained soils. Incorporate plenty of leaf mould into your soil, and where drainage is a problem add a little grit to the planting hole. A sprinkling of mycorrhizal fungi on the roots can help them settle in. As they become established, they’ll form clumps, providing useful ground cover with their pretty heart-shaped leaves.
They spread, using runners, in the same way as strawberries. They can be propagated easily from these, as they’ll form roots where they come into contact with the soil. Remove these runners in spring, as they divert energy from blooming. Deadheading prolongs the flowering season as long as possible.
Violets will self-sow, but growing your own from seed can be tricky as the seed needs to be fresh. Specialist growers gather seed in the summer and send it out immediately. Sow these seeds into trays filled with a free-draining seed compost as soon as you receive them. A spell of cold weather is needed to break the dormancy, so leave the trays in a cool greenhouse or cold frame over winter. Seedlings should start to emerge in February or March.

What to grow: heritage violets

Heritage variety ‘The Czar’. Photograph: Alamy ‘The Czar’ In his 1893 book Flowers Of The French Riviera, the French botanist Henry de Vilmorin noted that this large dark violet was in great demand at flower markets, where violets were supplied “in ready-made bunches… collared with fresh green leaves”.
‘Princess of Wales’ Introduced by French violet grower Armand Millet at the end of the 19th century. Particularly popular as a cut flower due to its large violet-blue flowers and strong fragrance.
‘Luxonne’ Another French heritage variety and popular cut flower with long stemmed violet-blue flowers and leaves. Good for ground cover.
‘Lianne’ Classic deep purple blooms that are strongly perfumed. First raised in France at the turn of the 20th century to supply florists.
‘Perle Rose’ Unusual pink-red flowers that are produced later than other cultivars, in March and April.
What to grow: new violets
‘Diana Groves’ Established from a seedling at Groves Nurseries, this was a gold-medal-winner at the International Violet Congress in 2004. Striking claret petals with pretty white markings.
‘Annie’ Another award-winning violet from Groves – smaller than some varieties but abundant with flowers in a delightful deep pink.
‘Santa’s Beard’ A stunning white cultivar with a delicate blush of faint purple and attractive veining.

Where to buy

For the true species of V. odorata and its white version, try nurseries that specialise in wild flowers, such as Herefordshire-based PlantWild. Groves Nurseries, who hold National Collection status for sweet violets, keep many heritage varieties alive and breed new violets. Also try Devon Violet Nursery and Plants For Shade

Ask Alys: your gardening questions answered

I would like to grow some “barometer plants” to use as an early warning system for my garden. What plants are first to respond to frost, first to bolt and first to wilt? Is this a waste of time?
It’s not a waste of time, but I’m not sure you’d have to invest in any particular variety. I would use half-hardy annuals that are sensitive to frost, such as cosmos, lobelia or nasturtiums. One side of my tiny garden can act so differently from the other that only by growing the same plant in several spots have I learned which plant can tolerate what.
An urban back garden is generally a sheltered place because of the effects of the urban heat island, so worrying a great deal about frosts is not necessary; there’s usually plenty of warning when a cold snap is coming. If a vegetable goes straight to seed (bolts), this is often an indicator of environmental stress; it can also be down to changing day length and temperature. If you want resilient plants that can withstand stress, worry more about improving your soil and spend more time making compost. Ultimately, it’s the strength of the roots that allows plants to withstand droughts and extremes of cold and heat.

Lotus flower season in China reaches full bloom – in pictures

July is when China's auspicious lotus flowers come into glorious full bloom – here are some beautiful specimens photographed at the Lotus Park in Luoyang, Henan Province, China