Your garden plants in my chosen country

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Hi GOYers! As most gardeners know, the plants they cherish in their own gardens mostly, in their original “format”, grow wild in other countries. Just by the next village on this mountain is a cattle corral, empty of cattle now as they are all loose on the mountain for summer, but the corral is FULL of white Datura (Angel’s Trumpets) or Thornapple as it is known here. I know the plant is poisonous and it will be eredicated before the cattle are let back in for the winter but, having once owned one Datura, seeing an area heaving with them is a wonderful sight.

We often go for mountain walks and climbs and, in Spring, discover lovely plants, one of which is the Hellebore with its bunches of nodding green flowers – another cherished garden plant. A little later in the year on the higher and drier mountains we find pillows of saxifrage in colours ranging from white, through pink, to deepest mauve.

In the higher, wetter meadows we suddenly come across swathes of Alpine daffodils, much shorter than garden varieties and a delicate pale yellow. Streams have Aquilegia growing along their banks and the fields and lanes surrounding my village are awash with Primroses and Violets in April, later showing little patches of white Alyssum.

I am amazed by the diversity of wild flowers here and often remember how much I paid for the priviledge of having these plants in my garden in Britain. Now I hardly need a flower garden – I just have to go for a stroll on the mountain.

• 17 Sep, 2008
• 7 likes

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