The Importance of Plants…
Plants have always been an important part of my life, before having a garden, house-plants filled the need to tend and observe plants. I love looking into the small details of a plant, the shape and colours of leaves, those tiny perfect flowers on an alpine plant , the sheer variety of form in plants.
My garden at May Cottage is not pristine, nor overly planned. It’s layered, quite unruly, and all the better for it. The garden has different areas which we partly inherited, but have developed as we have lived here for the past 26 years. I love colour, but green is by far the favourite, planting is full with ferns , box topiary, summer cosmos, spring dandelions, the abundant daisy flowers of fleabane and feverfew, it is all a part of a delicate system.
A living mosaic of colour, texture, and purpose.
Plants aren’t just beautiful, they are lifelines. To bees in early spring, when dandelions bloom, before anything else, to give that early nectar. To hoverflies and butterflies. To birds gathering seeds.
To us, too, in ways we often forget. The fascinating folklore stories and myths around plants show how they have been important for medicines, love potions or for more dastardly deeds !
Studying botany as part of my Environmental Science degree deepened my respect for the plant world. Knowing some of their Latin names, understanding how they grow, where they thrive, how they fit into a larger ecological web… this knowledge makes each embroidered stem or painted petal feel like a tribute. It matters to me that what I stitch is based on the real plant, that forget-me-nots look like forget-me-nots. That the flowers I use in most of my sachets are important for our pollinators.
In a time when wildflower meadows are disappearing and native species are under threat, my work is a way to preserve their presence; not just as decoration, but as memory, message, and map.
A healthy garden is a conversation with nature. One rooted in respect, not control. And I believe, wholeheartedly, that the more we value and protect our plants, the better chance we have of safeguarding all life that depends on them — including our own.
Foxgloves pop up every year in the garden, choosing where they want to be.
Greater Burdock - the roots were used in the Middle Ages as a vegetable. Rarely used now except in Italy and Portugal, where it is known as bardana or garduna.
Box topiary, ferns, hostas and Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus) are favourite plantings of mine in the garden
Field bindweed in a verge, beautiful and delicate. I love its other name - Wild morning-glory.
In one of the tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, it is known as ‘Our Lady’s little glass’ as the flower was used by Mary, mother of Jesus, to drink wine from when she helps free a wagoner’s cart.
