Taste. It’s a loaded word, isn’t it? With connotations of class or breeding; like something you’re born with.
The ‘proper’ English gardens are bastions of taste. Blues and greens, dusky pinks, swathes of this and artful clusters of that. As we fill the trolley at the garden centre we subconsciously check our taste-ometre: “not too gaudy is it..? not too naff..?” God forbid.
Well balls to that. Let’s have a bit of gaudy. And when better to treat our colour-starved eyes to a bit of blooming bling than in spring?
Today I swerved the white crocuses and planted up the window boxes and front door pots with those showy tarts of the flower world, Polyanthus, Primulas and Pansies. All ‘shop bought ready to go, because I was too damned lazy to plant them in the autumn.
The Polyanthus are massive and electric blue, which tower over and clashed rather marvelously with the velvety-purple Pansy ‘Neon Violet’. Let’s have a bit of neon!
Caring not a jot they didn’t really ‘go’ I squeezed in a couple of blowsy Ranunculus (‘mixed’… gasp!)
And just because I felt like it, I teamed the yellow Narcissus ‘Camelot’ (a great British naff name if ever I heard one) with the bubblegum pink Polyanthus. Ooh! Taste fail! But it’s going to make me smile every time I come home this month.
What’s the difference between Pansy the Polyanthus and the Primrose? No, I don’t have a punchline… but I do have a link that tells you.
