Blog 9 Aug 2010

Happy Smiling Sunflowers!

What a lovely time of year bloggers – with the very early autumnal hints on some trees being brought forward care of the recent prolonged dry spell, coupled with the golden sunshine at this time of year lightening up the recently circularly bailed wheat stalks – the whole of the Darent Valley glimmers in sheer delight. Combine all of this with the delicious smell of early morning dew and your mind drifts away with the fairies.

My mind more than most it has to be said! Am I walking around in a surreal softly focused hazy watercolour? Wonderful is the British Landscape. And as I swallow huge volumes of Kentish air particles – that sooth my gardener’s lungs – I stumble into a place called the World Garden – And my ever widening smile broadens my lips. My smile engulfs my whole now newly contoured face as I approach the North American section of the Garden. Why? – Because I’m standing in front of a mass of dancing, chirpy, south facing faces. The Sunflowers! Wowsers they cheer you up! If you’re ever down in the dumps lay your retinas on a sunflower!

Hundreds of Sunflowers are now coming into bloom ‘en mass’ along Lullingstone’s South Facing Wall. The Sunflower – Helianthus annuus – originally comes from Florida in SE USA not from the wonderful fields in France – which produce sunflower oil used in Flora Margarine and so on. Helianthus annuus is responsible for so many different cultivars – 6 of which we have mass planted here at Lullingstone. The range of size from the massive up to 15 foot Helianthus ‘Craven Strain’ & Helianthus ‘Titan’ to the dinky 1 foot tall Helianthus ‘Little Dorrit’ is amazing.

And the range of colour from hues of pale – rich yellow in the above mentioned to a delicious peach in the multi-headed Helianthus ‘Peach Passion’ to Helianthus ‘Earthwalker’ (pictured above and also multi-headed) – which has outstanding hues ranging diversely in the rich orange to deep terracotta and brown range – fabulous!!!

My favourite though faithful bloggers has got to be Helianthus ‘Magic Roundabout’ with a pinkish-red centre and pale yellow tips – So psychedelic! I promise – you’ll never put on a long sad face ever again after you’ve cultivated these cheery plant chlorophyll endowed souls!

And lastly dear bloggers, we have our Dahlia weekend this coming Sat/Sun at Lullingstone (14th & 15th August) – with guided tours of the floriferous World Garden with me and Mr Jon Wheatley – A world’s authority on the genus Dahlia. They’ll also be free food samples being given away from our own home grown vegetables – To miss this would be just plain silly!!!