Wild Garlic, Allium ursinum

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Wild Garlic

Wild Garlic, Allium ursinum

One of my favourite sights and smells of early May is Wild Garlic or Ramsons, Allium ursinum. Like Garlic Chives, this plant is both beautiful and edible, but it is also a common British wild flower. It is flowering at the moment in woodlands across the country, and in my back garden, where I introduced it several years ago.

Wild Garlic thrives in damp shade in deciduous woodland and often forms dense stands of wide green leaves, followed by groups of white flowers borne on stalks. The leaves resemble those of Lily of the Valley, Convallaria majalis, which are poisonous, but the strong garlic smell of Wild Garlic leaves is a giveaway. The smell gets stronger towards the end of May as the plants wilt and start to die down. By midsummer no leaves are visible and the Wild Garlic goes dormant again until the following spring.

If you grow Wild Garlic it will gradually spread if it likes where you’ve planted it and its black seeds will drop fairly close to the parent plant.

Wild Garlic is very pretty, especially en masse, but it is a great edible plant to grow as well. You can eat the bulbs if you grow it yourself or have the land owner’s permission, otherwise it is illegal to uproot it.

I often put a couple of leaves in a cheese sandwich but there are more sophisticated ways of eating it, such as these recipes on the BBC Food website and on the Guardian’s Word Of Mouth Blog. Wild Garlic is poisonous to dogs. According to Wikipedia, cows fed on Wild Garlic have milk that tastes slightly of garlic, and butter made from this milk was very popular in 19th century Switzerland. Wild Garlic is known as Baerlauch (Bear’s Garlic) in German because it was a popular spring food for Brown Bears. So, if you go down to the woods today…

The Plantation Garden and Cathedral Garden

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The Plantation Garden

The Plantation Garden

Yesterday afternoon was cold and damp and not the sunny afternoon I had imagined several months ago when I arranged a tour of The Plantation Garden and the Cathedral Garden at St. John’s RC Cathedral  for members of the Grapes Hill Community Garden Group.

But we had a great time. The Plantation Garden was lush and green after all the rain. Its formal beds were at their spring best, including a round one with pink tulips contrasting with blue forget-me-nots. On the banks there were the soft greens of ferns and wild garlic and the darker foliage of ivy and various shrubs. The white flowers of comfrey shone in the gloom and there were delightful details like a grassy bank of wild strawberries with Muscari (grape hyacinths).

The Plantation Garden - the fountain

The Plantation Garden – the fountain

The Plantation Garden was designed and built over a period of forty years by Henry Trevor, a prosperous Victorian upholsterer and cabinet maker, who lived in a large house adjoining the land, which was formerly a chalk quarry. He built terraces, a palm house, a rustic bridge and a fountain.

By the late twentieth century the garden was very overgrown but since 1980 The Plantation Garden Preservation Trust has restored the garden to its present state. It is now one of Norwich’s special attractions, especially on a sunny Sunday afternoon in summer, when visitors can enjoy tea and cake in the garden.

We continued on to St. John’s Roman Catholic Cathedral and were given a tour of the Cathedral Garden, which is maintained by Head Gardener Zanna Foley-Davies and a team of volunteers.

The garden at The Narthex

The garden at The Narthex

Zanna showed us around and we looked at photographs from three years ago, when the garden was overgrown and full of rubbish. Zanna has carefully transformed the garden into an asset for the community, with flowers, shrubs, fruit and space for people to meet. The apple trees and memorial rose garden have been rescued with careful pruning and maintenance and Zanna now plans to create a community vegetable garden in part of the area.

Finally we finished our afternoon with tea and cakes in The Narthex. Thanks to our guides at both gardens and the catering staff at The Narthex for such a warm welcome and an enjoyable afternoon.

Wood Spurge, Euphorbia amygdaloides

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Caper Spurge, Euphorbia lathyris. But my favourite spurge (Euphorbia) has to be the Wood Spurge, Euphorbia amygdaloides.

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae (with plum blossom and a carpet of Black Peppermint) in Grapes Hill Community Garden.

The Wood Spurge is a lovely, tough and adaptable garden plant that will grow in dry shade and also a British native, where it grows in woodlands especially in the south of England and Wales (see map). The plant spreads by underground runners and eventually the evergreen leaves will form a low weed-smothering carpet over the ground.

It is looking lovely at the moment in Grapes Hill Community Garden and in our back garden and we have just planted it at The Belvedere Centre. The lime green bracts almost glow in a dark, shady spot or on a dull day, and they will continue to provide interest until early summer.

The usual garden form is Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae, also known as Mrs Robb’s Bonnet. Thanks to Richard Mabey’s superb “Flora Britannica” (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996) I know that Mrs Mary Anne Robb was a Victorian adventurer, who discovered this form of Wood Spurge while attending a wedding in Istanbul in 1891. The resourceful woman put the specimen in her hat box to transport it home. Her great-grandson, Alastair Robb, and his wife are now renovating the garden at Cothay Manor in Somerset, where they live.

There is also an attracive form of the plant with purple foliage, Euphorbia amygdaloides var. ‘Purpurea’.