Cornish hedges are an exuberant delight. I visited in April a few years back, and every lane was awash with alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum). This year, in May, they put on a stunning display that would put a Chelsea show garden to shame.
The backdrop is generous, luxurious green. In shady alleys this is provided by lacy ferns; in sunnier spots, grasses first head for the skies, then tumble to the earth like green waterfalls.
This monochrome bounty is punctuated with white. In some places, tall and graceful umbels of some member of the carrot family (cow parsley, perhaps?) sway gently in the breeze. In others, great swathes of Allium triquetrium (the three-cornered leek) send up spires of gently nodding bell-shaped white flowers. But the most abundant plant here at this time of year is exploding in great puffs of star-shaped white flowers. Wild garlic (Allium ursinum) scents the air, particularly when the car brushes against the hedge to make room for passing in these narrow lanes. We saw one patch that was a six-feet high wall of wild garlic flowers; such bounty must make this a forager’s paradise.
But lest your eye weary of two colours only, there is more. Bluebells, singly or in small clumps, mirror the glimpses of blue sky overhead. And there are delicate spots of pink, as well, from the small, wild flowers of red campion Silene dioica.
The overall effect is one of joyous, bountiful spring. Wild, wayward, and haphazard – a beauty that was not designed. And yet could, perhaps, be recreated at home. Alliums, edible herbs and spring flowers – dowdy and overshadowed maybe, as the more colourful blooms of summer flowers appear. But here, at the turn of the season, a feast for the eyes, and the palate.
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