Monty Don loves these harbingers of spring, and I’m beginning to think he is on to something
W
hen I was a child I was always mystified by the walks around the garden that my father and grandfather would undertake shortly after the latter arrived to visit. I’d see them as I was playing outside, or through the window from inside, and be baffled. What could they possibly be looking at?
Fast-forward three decades and I’m the one pinching my mum’s clogs to inspect my parents’ dinky and beautifully appointed garden. My dad’s complaining about the hellebores, which haven’t naturalised as well as in the garden I used to watch him walk his father around. It’s something else that catches my eye: the bold, bright green crown of leaves of a primrose (Primula vulgaris to come. In the midst of a drizzly, gloomy month, there it was: a beacon of hope.
It was also a harbinger of what I suspect might be middle age. Primula is a sprawling genus, but I’m talking about the common primrose – something I’ve never loved. They’re easily dismissed as rather frumpy, due to an unfortunate habit of appearing on greetings cards and embroidered on to handkerchiefs. Those minimalist five-petalled flowers with yolky middles have long been associated with a more Enid Blyton aesthetic in my mind.
