Mediterranean Garden Society
Mediterranean Garden Society
In the Pink
by Caroline Harbouri
photos by Lucinda Willan and Yvonne Barton
Photographs to illustrate the article published in The Mediterranean Garden No. 118, August 2024
The photo at the top of this page shows Nerine bowdenii blooming in a pot in central Italy (photo Yvonne Barton)
Caroline Harbouri writes: With her artist’s eye Gertrude Jekyll chose for her famed herbaceous borders the plants that represented the best examples of the colours she wanted. Herbaceous borders of the English kind are not suitable or practicable in mediterranean-climate gardens, where by and large perennial plants take second place to drought-adapted shrubs and sub-shrubs – all the more so as summer temperatures seem to be increasing and annual rainfall decreasing. But this doesn’t of course mean that colour is not important.
I have written recently about grey and silver-leaved plants (TMG 116). Their subtle nuances of colour and variety of leaf forms and textures provide a solid, characteristically mediterranean, year-long (in most cases) visual framework within which flower colour is a seasonal bonus.
Bougainvillea sp. At Sparoza (Lucinda Willan)
It always interests me that colour in flowers is of a different quality from the same shade in clothes or furnishings. Brillant magenta looks beautiful in Silene coronaria and some bougainvilleas; bright reds and oranges are wonderfully vibrant in, for example, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis and Thunbergia gregorii. Yet few people want to wear these colours (red is perhaps the easiest) and even fewer want to paint their walls magenta, scarlet or orange. Is the difference due to the fact that colour in flowers is not flat, as it is in cloth or paint, but somehow impregnated with light?
Little girls tend to love Barbie-pink. However the pink flowers that I want to write of here are mostly a more delicate, less aggressive shade of pink. Pinks is the common name rather charmingly given to small Dianthus species, in spite of the fact that some varieties are white. Actually, I believe this name derives not from the colour but rather from the “pinked” or notched edges of the petals – think of dressmakers’ pinking shears. The neat little hummocks of narrow blueish or greyish-green noded leaves are spangled with scented flowers, a far cry from the stiff and ungainly florists’ carnation. Dianthus anatolicus from Turkey has flowers of a very pale pink with deeply fringed petals, while D. corsicus is a brighter colour.
Pinks have a deliciously spicy scent and have been loved and cultivated in England for centuries. They were known as gillyflowers or clove gillyflowers. Gardeners were creating Dianthus cultivars very early on. In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale Perdita speaks of “our carnations and streak’d gillyflowers” and describes the gardener’s art of producing mixed-colour (pied) cultivars in these words: “There is an art which, in their piedness, shares/With great creating nature.” She doesn’t want to plant them because she considers them “nature’s bastards”. (Some garden purists might perhaps agree.)
Cistus albidus growing wild in central Italy (Yvonne Barton)
There are a great many garden-worthy Cistus cultivars in all shades of pink, including the delightfully named and very bright ‘Blushing Peggy Sammons’ (I wonder who she was and what made her blush). Often one loves best what one knows best; among all the pink Cistus species the two I am particularly fond of are the C. creticus of Greece and the paler pink C. albidus of the South of France with its downy leaves. Cistus × pauranthus ‘Natacha’ with its plentiful small and very pale pink flowers is also attractive.
Prunus dulcis on the edge of the Phrygana at Sparoza (Lucinda Willan)
In our old garden we had three tall and woody almond trees (Prunus dulcis). In spite of their age and the fact that they ‘wept’ an amber-coloured sticky resin from their trunks, they produced their pale pink blossom profusely in early February followed by plentiful nuts. So many were the nuts and so tall the trees that we harvested the almonds only from the lower branches and left those higher up for the tree rats: I didn’t begrudge them their share. Being the earliest fruit-bearing tree to flower, often when the weather is still cold, the almond lifts one’s heart as a harbinger of the spring to come.
Something that has always puzzled me is why enormous quantities of precious water are used to irrigate almond orchards in California. In Greece as far as I know no one irrigates almonds – certainly our trees produced a good crop without being watered, although Kifissia, where we lived, is generally a bit cooler and less dry than many parts of Greece. Yet the villages of Kritsa and Krousta produce almonds in Crete, much further south and drier, where an almond syrup called soumada, drunk diluted in water, is made.
Cydonia oblonga (Yvonne Barton)
The flowers of the quince, Cydonia oblonga, are beautiful small pale pink cups. In fact I find the whole tree attractive with its pubescent leaves and golden-yellow fruits. These cannot of course be eaten raw and you need a sharp knife to peel and core them before cooking. In Greece leaves of the rose-scented geranium, Pelargonium graveolens (also with a pink flower), are sometimes used to flavour cooked quince.
I have mentioned elsewhere the matching pink of Kolkwitzia amabilis and Clematis montana in our garden. We also had a second Kolkwitzia of a much paler colour, a pinky-white. I can understand why this shrub was given the species name amabilis; I did indeed love it. It is not however in the least drought-tolerant and requires watering in summer.
Zephyranthes ‘La Bufa Rosa’ in the Woodland border at Sparoza (Lucinda Willan)
I have always preferred driving on minor roads rather than on motorways. There’s no doubt that a motorway gets you to your destination faster but you must necessarily concentrate on the road, whereas on country roads the surroundings are not anonymous; as you drive you can glimpse things from the corner of your eye and if you wish stop to examine them more closely. This is how I first saw Zephyranthes minuta, the pink rain lily, many years ago. A flash of pure pink caught my eye, which proved to belong to the pretty funnel-shaped flowers of this Peruvian bulb, thriving crammed into a recycled tin can outside a village house. I didn’t recognise it and looked it up as soon as we got home. Later I grew it.
For some reason when I tried to grow the autumn-flowering Nerine bowdenii in my old garden it was without much success. I don’t know why but gardening is like that: sometimes one’s successes or particularly one’s failures seem to be without rhyme or reason. Eile Gibson had much more success with nerines in her garden in France, as described in her article in TMG 106 and see the photo at the top of this page.
Amaryllis belladonna on the Hillside at Sparoza (Lucinda Willan)
Another pink autumn-flowering bulb, Amaryllis belladonna, has become naturalised on the island of Zakynthos. I’ve no idea when or how this occurred. Indeed, the whole question of how a non-native plant becomes naturalised is interesting: perhaps some reader can tell us more about it. At any rate, the pale pink of the clumps of Amaryllis flowering at the edges of olive groves in September is quietly beautiful.
Cyclamen graecum on the Hillside at Sparoza (Lucinda Willan)
Cyclamens are among the pleasures of autumn. At Sparoza the great colony of Cyclamen graecum in flower makes an impressive sight. Their colour is a richer, slightly sharper shade of pink than Amaryllis belladonna. There is a modesty to them which is part of their charm. My favourite Greek cyclamen however is neither autumn-flowering nor pink: it is the white, spring-flowering Cyclamen creticum. I was so thrilled when I first saw it growing in Crete.
Tulipa saxatilis open wide (Yvonne Barton)
I would have said that I don’t much like the combination of pink and yellow. The exception that proves the rule is another bulb, Tulipa saxatilis, pink with a yellow centre. This tulip opens wide during the day and closes, to become classically “tulip-shaped” again, in the evening. I enjoy the memory of hundreds of them on a high plateau in Crete, all wide open and all facing in the same direction to catch the sun.
Ebenus cretica in Derek’s Garden and Dry Bank at Sparoza (Lucinda Willan)
Crete is also home to the large endemic shrub Ebemus cretica, a member of the Fabaceae family. It is drought-tolerant and summer-dormant and was an early introduction to the garden of Sparoza by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt. It is not a plant usually found in nurseries even today, so it would be interesting to know where Tyrwhitt acquired her plant more than 50 years ago. Its pink flowers, set off by fine silky hairs, are held in upright cone-shaped inflorescences.
There are plants with pink forms which (call me prejudiced) I can’t help feeling ought not to be pink. The first that comes to mind is the annual larkspur, Consolida ajacis. It is not that there is anything wrong with its shade of pink, it is just that to my mind larkspurs, and delphiniums in general, are meant to be blue, that it is their blueness that gives them their charm. In my garden I thus took care to cut off the flowers of any pink larkspurs that emerged to prevent them from self-seeding.
Ipomoea purpurea pink form on the East Terrace (Lucinda Willan)
Similarly I feel that morning glories should not be pink. Pink-flowered cultivars are disappointing compared to the rich purple of Ipomoea purpurea, the common morning glory, or the ethereal clear sky-blue of Ipomoea tricolor ‘Heavenly Blue’.
I don’t have strong feelings about pink lavender (e.g. Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote Pink’), though I prefer lavenders in the usual shades of mauve. I’m less happy about pink-flowered rosemary.
I believe that there is a pink-flowered cultivar of the lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis. Quelle horreur! I’ve never seen it but can’t help thinking a priori that it is an abomination. What French lover would want to offer pink lilies of the valley to his beloved on the 1st of May? The little rounded white bells arranged along their arching stems, often half-hidden by the leaves and captivatingly scented, have a simplicity and purity that couldn’t exist in pink.
However, I am nothing if not inconsistent. I used to grow a form of Symphoricarpos albus, the snowberry, which had pink rather than white berries. The round white berries, regular as beads, of the species are striking, but I have to say that I loved the pale pink berries of my cultivar, name unknown, even better.
To end, there are so many pink roses that I shall name only one that I like: the shrub rose ‘Clair Matin’.
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