Hepaticas and other small spring stunners are showing off their delicate and elegant charm
Carol Klein
The latest from Carol's beautiful cottage garden... plus her diary for the week!
Many years ago at an early spring RHS show in Westminster, visitors clustered around one particular exhibit like bees round a honey pot. On one side of a set of screens, running their entire length, was waist-high staging covered in subtly-coloured cloth.
Along it were arranged a series of hand-thrown raku pots of precise design, each containing a perfectly presented hepatica.
The line of pots was punctuated by several low and wide ceramic bowls filled with water in which floated a collection of stemless flowers, each separate from the next. Here and there, small groups of intent Japanese nurserymen in smart suits sport scores of flowers, each borne separately on a fine hairy stem. The new leaves which emerge as flowering finishes have three or five lobes. They are hairy and deep green, although some may be exquisitely marbled in paler, more glaucous shades. Their dainty fragility belies their tough mountain woodland origins.
