Chrysanthemums

First cultivated in China as a flowering herb considered to have the power of life...boiled roots as headache remedy, sprouts and petals eaten in salads, leaves brewed for a festive drink and then I learned something I didn't know...'Kiku' is Japanese for chrysanthemum..

So who remembers Kiku then?

I can't for the life of me remember what is smelt like...surely not chrysanthemums, but I had the set to match my yellow bedroom back in the 1969.

Searching for pictures of Kiku I was reminded of another perfume of my youth...Aqua Manda. Now that I can remember and I see it has been re-launched, who would have thought it.



But I digress..

Bookhound had read somewhere, who knows where, that growing chrysanthemums these days was considered very working class and that really the best gardeners wouldn't plumb such depths. This seems to me like a jolly good reason to grow them (along with marigolds) and we have had a fine year enjoying the fruits of the Tinker's planting up on his chrysanth patch. He had ordered Gompies from Woolmans and nurtured them along for us all to enjoy through his last summer. I now see they are classed as half-hardy perennials, so perhaps we were lucky only to lose one plant through the winter because the rest flowered again beautifully this year, and for minimal effort beyond regular feeding.

I read in the Gospel according to Woottens of Wenhaston (my favourite plant book, I follow all advice religiously)  that you should prune chrysanthemums by a third in the second week of June which I did...and then held my breath. 

Here they are in June, after their chop...

and then in July with some seeds scattered amongst...cornflowers, california poppies and godetia...

and now to August...lots of pretty

Pretty Messy Mayhem the Tinker would have said, and notice how those little sunflower seedlings have shot up too.

It wasn't a great year for sunflowers, not enough night warmth maybe, plus I had bought different seeds. Silly me, I'm going back to my Earthwalkers from Mr Higgledy next year...



The Tinker was a very tidy gardener, always out there pottering around, weeding and pruning and feeding, and having taken over his plot this year I now see how very hard he worked to keep it just so and now looking a little more unruly than he might have liked. The chrysanths have flourished bronze, red and pink flowers which I have been picking in huge bunches since August and they have only just finished. November and I have finally cut them back.

Much more about this wonderful book, The Gardens of the British Working Class by Margaret Willes to come. I mentioned it on here a few weeks ago, and my thanks to Yale University Press who heard me wailing from afar that the copy I had from the library had been reserved and had to go back, and so I now have the lovely paperback edition with which I am delighted. Therein plenty about the chrysanthemum and the first society devoted to its cultivation and exhibition established in Stoke Newington in London in 1846. Bermondsey, Kennington and Camden Town quickly followed suit and it was suggested that the chrysanthemum's popularity may, in part have been due to their splash of late autumn colours when all else was soot, fog and practically no daylight in the city. It's true they have certainly been the last ones standing, the night watchmen in our garden, before winter sets in.

Margaret Willes points out that, in the first instance, it was 'working' rather than 'working class' gardeners who dominated the chrysanthemum societies and their exhibitions, with their access to estate conservatories and the time to cultivate. But the men on the street soon joined in, enjoying the freedom to grow their own and run something for themselves without the intervention of 'those who considered themselves their moral and social superiors.'

'the chrysanthemum was the only flower the working class man could successfully cultivate without an expense beyond his means.'

You only have to watch Downton Abbey, far fetched or not, to understand the degrees of class consciousness at work.

By the way...are you watching? Please no spoilers in comments for those abroad who haven't see it yet, but we are busy playing Downton Dating or Death, pairing everyone off for a happy ever after ending and probably a couple of tragedies... Mary and ???,  Mrs Patmore and ??? , Daisy and ???, Mr Molesley and ???...

So we cherish the Tinker's working class chrysanthemums. If deep frosts threaten I shall be out there with my horticultural fleece to keep them warm, and will look forward to those first green shoots next spring.

Meanwhile anyone else growing chrysanthemums...

If not I wonder which are the night watchmen in your garden as winter approaches...