A friend tells a sweet story about her mother, whose London garden is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen. An émigré from Sri Lanka, she arrived in the English countryside barely out of her teens and carefully tended an unknown plant for weeks, patiently awaiting the day it would bloom. When it did, she was delighted by its bright yellow sunburst of a flower.
In time she learned the name of it: dandelion. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.
Learn more. We remember our first encounter with some plants, but others seep more slowly into our consciousness. Take verbascums: I have developed a creeping fondness for these flowers over the years, tickled by the way they turn up unannounced.
There was the soft yellow volunteer that arrived in a pot of a now-forgotten plant I picked up at a neighbourhood sale and gently took over that corner of the bed, a glowing spire beneath the plum tree. The next summer, I fell for Verbascum ‘Helen Johnson’ , in Jo Thompson’s wildlife garden for the RHS at Hampton Court flower show: dusky coral pink ruffles surrounded a dark pink crown, swaying elegantly among hot pink salvias. These days I enjoy spotting the rogue wild cultivar ( V.
thapsus ) – the bright yellow greater mullein, with its lovely fuzzy grey-tinged foliage – popping up in the park and corners of gardens other plants didn’t fancy. It’s also known as moth mullein: caterpillars eat the .