Auriculas

“They are much more like pets than plants,”Patricia Cleveland-Peck, author of The Auriculas of Spitalfields

acknowledgement to www.albion-prints.com

I've always fancied the idea of an auricula theatre. I'm not, in general, one for formal displays, but somehow theses little primulas, with their wide-eyed, turned-up faces appeal, and the theatre has proved itself the ideal display venue over the years. Native to the alps of central Europe, auriculas have been known as cultivated plants in England since Elizabethan times. To begin with, they were confined to the gardens of the wealthy, but during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, gardeners (florists) of all kinds began to grow and to show them. These shows were known as feasts, and the flowers, (also tulips, polyanthus, carnation, pink, hyacinth, anemone and ranunculus) known as floristry flowers. The emphasis was on perfection at close quarters.

 The right opportunity arose when Piers discovered an old stone shelf as he formed the new garden shapes. It faces north-west and is about 8” deep – not exactly a theatre, but good for displaying auriculas, never the less.

I don't know anything about auriculas, so I sought out Pop's Plants, a specialist nursery on the edge of the New Forest. There we found Gill and Lesley. We made our way through their cottage and across the narrow, pretty garden to an enormous, hidden, open shed. There was a roof, but it was made of green netting to shade the plants, which were set out on extensive waist-high benches. Tiny plants as far as the eye could see – thousands of them. Gill and Lesley hold 4 national collections and raise their own plants for sale and to show.

The encounter was a delightful education! Gill told us how they raise the plants (no micro-propagation here) and breed them. The various types of plant (alpine, border, double, striped, show edged, show fancy and show selfs) and a few of the dos and don'ts. Bright but not too sunny. Moist but not too wet. We came away with 7 'easy-to-grow' 'alpines' and a 'border', two still in flower and the rest to surprise us with a range of colour next year. Another stipulation was to remove offsets in order to give a nobler, more showy plant.

I shall be experimenting with these offsets to see if I can populate the edges of the garden with these fussy little prima donnas and have them edging the paths as they would have done in the 19^th century back-to-backs of Lancashire.