

### GODS AND GREEN FINGERS

### An Anthology for Plant Lovers

by Linda Talbot

Illustrations and photographs by Linda Talbot

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Linda Talbot 2014

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

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**Table of Contents**

Introduction

wild iris  
[short story] \- The Maze

hellebore  
[short story] - The Peacock's Eye

poppies on Crete  
[short story] - The Intruder

heliotrope

crocus

myrtle

hyacinth

lotus

anemone  
[short story] - The Windflower

narcissus

lily  
[short story] - White Lilies

exotic eccentrics

More Bizarre Beauties  
cockscomb

Curiosities to Cultivate – Succulents  
Climbers  
morning glory  
[short story] - The Hanging Gardens of Nalybob

Trees  
[short story] - Olive

Gardens of Quartz and Gold  
The Quartz Garden  
The Golden Garden  
The Rock Garden  
The Basalt Garden  
The Conglomerate Garden

A Palette of Plants  
Rose Window in Chartres

Author's thanks, contact blog and short note

Introduction

I have long loved growing plants, from Californian poppies that recklessly colonised a border in an East London garden to Oriental lilies nurtured for their fragrant transience in pots.

I discovered that often plants one expected to proliferate, did not appear, while others considered difficult, flourished. I began to write about plants for a local paper after moving to Crete, where I have also enjoyed growing Mediterranean species that would have died in northern Europe.

In Greece, the gods look over one's shoulder. They have close associations with the plants grown in gardens and which flourish in the wild.

Headstrong gods, mere mortals, the brief beauty of flowers; this heady combination has defied time and is still a riveting read.

Women turned, with immortal help, into foliage and flowers. Young men were accidentally slain and blooms, now commonplace, sprang from their blood. And in ritual and finely wrought artefacts, flowers were revered for reasons we may never fully understand. In this book I recall the myths these plants inspired with hints on how to grow them in your garden. As they unfold you may recall the fantasy they fostered when man had closer links with the natural world. So I have selected plants, from the commonplace to the curious, pursued their mythical past and given tips on how to help them flourish.

And I suggest how to plan a garden that reflects a painter's palette and another based on minerals and rocks.

And I include short stories inspired by plants and gardens.

"A garden is a lovesome thing...." some poet said. But a garden may be rife with surprises, not to mention danger...plants may heal, poison and fire the imagination and will probably be around when we are long gone. So don't take your garden for granted!

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"The awkward flay-leafed flag flower or the iris......" So ran the first line of a poem I once wrote while watching irises prance in the wind by the pond in our Suffolk garden. Even then I was drawn to their fluttering fragility.

Iris was the messenger of the gods and the flower was named after her. She led the souls of the dead along a rainbow whose colours reflected her iridescence. Iris ran fast, when she was not soaring on golden wings. Zeus took advantage of her alacrity.

When the gods on Olympus quarrelled or lied, he sent Iris to fetch water from the dark River Styx in a golden goblet. If a god told a lie by this water he was struck unconscious for a year. And after that he suffered more mysterious and no doubt pernicious punishment. For ten years he could not serve on godly councils or even join in celebrations with their amiably erring traits of humanity.

And Iris was sent to fetch Demeter who had turned the flourishing earth to dust as she mourned for her daughter Persephone, abducted by Hades and hidden in the Underworld. Iris went to Eleusis and found black-clad Demeter in the temple. But she refused to leave. So even the persuasive powers of a gods' messenger were not guaranteed.

Iris florentina \- large, white-flowered and sweet smelling, inspired the Fleur-de-lis, the French heraldic symbol and is found on rocks in the Mediterranean, while the Yellow Iris (iris pseudocorus) thrives in swampy earth in the Greek mountains.

There are at least five kinds you can grow in your garden. Their needs are surprisingly diverse and those that do not need watering, ideal for a dry climate. Most irises emerge from rhizomes - long, horizontal underground stems with a bud at one end.

Iris japonica - the Crested or Orchid Iris - originally from China and Japan, is one of the loveliest; pale lavender with gold markings, its petals are gently frayed. Plant it in a light but not too sunny place in moist and well-aerated soil, rich in organic material. Water well and remove dry leaves and floral stems in autumn. You can then divide the rhizomes but do not plant them too deeply.

The iris germanica or German Iris, often known as "bearded" because of yellow hairs along central veins, is one of the most versatile. This herbaceous perennial has a large creeping, branched rhizome; an aerial shoot that is foliar and floral at the end of each branch.

This is a cultivated hybrid and probably originated in the eastern Mediterranean. It likes sun and will grow in any soil so long as it is not waterlogged. There is usually no need to water. If it looks poorly, a little bonemeal should suffice.

Colours range from white and mauve to a deep yellow with frilly leaves, another has a yellow flower with the striking contrast of reddish lower petals.

Iris lutescens from south western Europe, has deep purple to sky blue flowers with yellowish marks inside and should be treated like the German iris. The Algerian iris (iris unguicularis), from the Mediterranean region of Africa, is particularly beautiful with lilac petals and handsome, feather-like markings. This plant is happy in sun or shade, needs no watering and likes to be left alone. The Spanish iris (iris xiphium) is another good looker with lilac petals streaked at the base with yellow. It loves sun, plenty of manure dug in the ground before planting and ample water. This plant has bulblets, but it is best to buy fresh bulbs.

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Seen from above, the solution of the maze seems simple. High laurel hedges are clipped to reveal narrow dust paths, dead ends and a clear cut way to reach the empty grass circle in the centre. But that is from above.

Who devised this dubious means of fun, providing diversion in so many great gardens? For, once inside, the hedges soar and enclose, creating chronic claustrophobia and a disorientating sense of being severed from reality.

The maze lies in the grounds of an anciently mellow house owned by a wealthy eccentric who has mischievously enlarged the original maze, so one of his four gardeners is constantly extricating lost visitors.

In the empty central circle had stood an elegantly poised statue of Adonis. But some louts had covered his classic body with graffiti and he had been removed for cleaning. Sadly, the inferior material from which he was made, used to cut the cost of the commission, had crumbled and he had been whisked away with the following week's rubbish.

The eccentric owner had strode restlessly through the maze and, addled by its madness, had proclaimed, "A young man resembling Adonis will enter the maze, be enchanted and transformed into that epitome of proportion and grace!" The gardeners, who were constantly searching for their master in the maze, smiled sadly and shook their heads.

"Come on - it'll be fun!" Bryan urges Penny, his diffident partner. She views the opening in the ominous hedge, admitting the unwary.

"It isn't far to the middle - I'll beat you to it!" And Bryan has gone - a shiver of white dust rising in his wake.

"Hey - wait!" Penny enters and follows the path he took. But he has vanished. She treads cautiously between the high hedges, their lush upper leaves shining in the sun, those below, sinister in shadow.

Silence. Is there anyone else in the maze? The leaves do not stir. Penny looks longingly at the patch of blue sky above. She stumbles in her tight shoes. The path terminates abruptly. A dead end.

"Bryan!" she cries. Her voice is thrown mockingly back. She turns to retrace her steps and sees another path to the right. She hurries, hoping this one leads to the centre. But it too stops at a dead end. Impatiently she punches the thick leaves, barely stirring them with her hot hands. Her summer dress clings unpleasantly. Despite the shade she is sweating and scrapes back the straying fair hair from her face.

Again, she retraces her steps and swerves, panicky now, down another path to the left. Is it her imagination, or is this path more narrow than the last? She gasps - exasperated on reaching yet another cul-de-sac. She kicks off the tight shoes, leaving them overturned in the dust.

"Bryan!" She yells again. Nothing. No other people - either lost or able to show her the way out. No breath of a breeze. The laurel leaves might have solidified; broodingly verdant jailers without keys.

The horror of when, as a child, she was locked in the garden shed by her father, descends on her like lead. She had harshly suppressed the memory of those moments that turned into hours before she was released, numb and uncomprehending.

Now the clustering leaves might be silently assessing her. She imagines they conceal eyes as cold as her father's, refusing to forgive her reluctance to fulfil HIS ambition. He had wanted to write but had been forced into a salesman's job to help support his parents.

So he had inundated Penny with books, pen and paper. Looking at the blank sheets, she had frozen, unable to produce a word. When she had met Bryan her father had urged her not to get involved - a writer's life was single-minded. He cursed the handsome young man. But she had run away and now, living with Bryan, she has banished books - and potted plants - from the house.

She tries one rough path after another. All lead to dead ends. The sun moves slowly westwards and a chill wind ripples the laurel leaves. Penny sinks to her knees, head in hands.

"Please, daddy, let me out!" she hears the voice of a child pleading. Shocked, she struggles to collect herself, but she is shaking and starts to sob. She had not wanted to visit the gardens with their burgeoning plants and, on the edge of immaculate lawns, garden sheds, whose shadowy interiors she dared not contemplate.

The sun is setting. A lurid light lies for a while on top of the hedge, then slowly dims. A chill wind whispers like a querulous interloper through the heavy leaves. Penny takes another path, the white dust darkening, the inevitable dead end barely perceptible. She wanders aimlessly now, bumping against the immutable hedge, hearing a malicious murmur in the wind.

"Bryan!" she moans. She lives again the cloistered hours in the garden shed; waiting to be released, given supper but not forgiven for failing to comply with her father's wishes. But this time, no key turns in the rusty lock, no gruff voice orders her back into a an unwelcoming world.

The wind drops. Silence. Then the pale moonlight spills coldly on the hedge top. Penny sinks against the leaves. Her eyes close as they did, as a despairing means of escape, in the garden shed. She falls into a half sleep, probed by invisibly audacious fingers.

She wakes as light filters through the hedge top to find she has fallen into the laurel and the leaves are prodding her. Panicking, she finds her feet and stumbles down one more path that leads purposefully towards the centre.

Subtly it curves. Penny hardly dares look round the corner, unable to face another dead end. But there is the clearing; the circle of well tended grass lit by tentative rays of early sun. And in the centre stands Bryan, head high, hand on hip; every inch the Greek hero of unlikely legend.

"Bryan!" Penny rushes to him, trips and grazes a leg against his foot. He might be made of stone. Horrified, she grasps one of his hands. She feels cold flesh but, looking up, sees a face frozen with the blind eyes of manipulated marble.

Penny runs frantic fingers over his skin that looks like stone, yet retains the vulnerability of flesh. Above his sightless eyes, Bryan's mouth is a sealed and finely chiselled line. She recalls her father's curse.

And that is how a gardener finds them - Penny clinging in frustration and fatigue to the unresponding man who had rushed so blithely into the mad enchantment of the maze.

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The most striking White Hellebores were said to grow on Mount Oeta, where Heracles decided to end it all on a funeral pyre. He had pushed his luck by taking a mistress while married to Deianeira. No longer young, she sought the centaur Nessus, hearing he had a love charm that might focus her husband's roving eye on her.

There are several versions of her encounter with Nessus, including one in which she spreads the shirt woven for Heracles' return, with the mysterious mixture Nessus had given her. She was alarmed to see the remains of the wool she had used for this, burn and bubble with red foam when she threw it away. Had Nessus deceived her?

Heracles put on the shirt and was instantly racked with pain. The mixture may have had poison from the Hydra which flowed in Nessus' blood and spread over Heracles' limbs. He tried ripping off the shirt but it clung and his flesh came away with it. In despair he ordered the building of a pyre of oak and wild olive. As he died, thunderbolts fell and demolished the pyre. The hellebores were no doubt smoke-smothered witnesses.

This plant - thought to cure insanity - recurs in relation to Apollo's priest Melampes, who objected to women following the cult of Dionysus. So he gave them milk from a goat which had eaten helleborus cyclophyllus and they sobered up. With hellebore, delegates from Delphi, devoted to sustaining a cult and its temples, poisoned the water of Pleistus. And the town of Krissa in Phocis which contended with Delphi for Apollo's favours, surrendered after a siege of ten years.

Helleborus cyclophyllus is a robust perennial with leafy heads of a few large open green flowers and conspicuous hand-shaped leaves. It is found in woods and bushy places in the hills and mountains of Greece. But the Stinking Hellebore, or Bears-Foot (helleborus foetidus), is a British native, that has spread to countries from Italy to Spain. It stinks when bruised.

The Christmas Rose (helleborus niger) is a beautiful variant and easy to grow. This is a bushy evergreen perennial with a fine white flower appearing as the name suggests, in winter. A native of southern Europe, it likes shade and is happy in a shrubbery or among trees.

It likes chalk rich, even clayey soil with humus and an occasional dressing of manure. It resents being disturbed and likes water but can survive dryness. In the autumn remove dead flowers and any dead or yellowing growth. You can propagate by clump division in autumn or spring.

Equally lovely is the Lenten Rose (helleborus orientalis). This comes in various colours including a subdued and finely speckled lilac and it flowers in late winter and early spring.

Originating in Greece and Asia Minor, this hellebore likes to grow in shade in a limey or clayey sandy soil with moist humus. It appreciates a periodic dressing of manure and dislikes disturbance. Water regularly and remove dry growth while it rests. Propagate by clump division after flowering in the spring.

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The garden glows; a bid by a desert dweller for paradise on Earth. Its four beds burgeon with rare flowers. Its white walks leap with sunlight and at the end of one, a fountain flows into a placid pool.

Not a leaf stirs. The garden, flowering around a great house on an arid plain, might be breathless under a spell.

Then, from the house, steps a middle aged man in a purple robe trimmed with gold and behind him, his guest - a woman in a modest white shift and a Persian rose in her hair.

They walk along a blatant white path and choose a seat of rose marble. They sit in amiable silence. Then the man says, "I owe much to your father, Lisane. He helped me build my business empire. You must tell me if you need help in any way."

The woman smiles. "I'm content. Although I'd like to meet your nephew." She has seen him passing through the house and was struck by his stature and good looks.

"Of course you shall," promises her host. And that evening as the exotic flowers gently close, they meet. He is polite but distant, his mind elsewhere.

The next day Lisane sees the peacock. He struts - the epitome of male vanity; his magnificent tail spread in egocentric splendour. He pauses before her, his canny eye assessing this female, dressed today more richly in a yellow, loose-sleeved gown with fine embroidery. She hopes to impress the indifferent nephew.

The peacock turns, quivering his audacious tail and struts away, along the pristine path to the fountain.

And again, that night, the nephew passes with but a brief acknowledgement of her presence in the twilit house.

"Your peacock is very striking," Lisane comments to her host.

"Ah - yes. No ordinary bird. One has always been kept in the garden. There is a legend claiming that if you pluck a feather from its tail, float it in a bowl of rosewater and wish, whatever you want will be granted. Nonsense of course, but a pretty tale - excuse me, I have to organise a few things. I'll see you at dinner, my dear."

"Yes, of course." Lisane rises and steps into the moonlit garden.

A rustle close by and she turns to see the peacock brazenly spreading his feathers in the icy light. Cautiously she draws near. "Quiet now. Just let me -"

She reaches a white hand over his handsome head to touch a feather in his tail. As though expecting this, the peacock does not stir and lets her pluck the feather with trembling fingers. Then he quietly folds his tail, turns with head held high and struts into the night.

Lisane shivers. She returns to the house, clutching the feather in her right hand. In her room a bowl of rosewater already stands, as though awaiting her wish. Gently she lays the feather on the still surface. The feather stirs; its "eye" appearing to candidly assess her.

She cups her hands round the bowl and silently mouths her desire to seduce Bazal, her host's haughty nephew. No sooner has she expressed the wish, than she hears footsteps in the passage outside her room. They pause at her door. A knock.

"Come in!" Lisane, who is not beautiful, adjusts the pale pink night robe embroidered with carnations. Her fair hair falls unheeded on her shoulders. The door opens. Bazal steps into the room, resplendent in a blue silk robe. His black hair is perfumed and sleek, his elegant fingers boast rings of tourmaline and amber. He treads softly in embroidered slippers across the Turkish carpet.

"Good evening!" His voice is low.

"Hello!" Lisane is sitting on the white silk coverlet.

"I felt you call. Did you want to discuss something?" asks Bazal.

"No, not really I ..." Lisane breaks off and smiles. She holds out her ringless hands. She feels strong and strangely endowed. Bazal looks puzzled but also sits on the bed, then takes one of her sunburned hands in his. Lisane draws him closer and plants a light kiss on his lips.

The peacock feather stirs. The couple embrace.

Each day brings discoveries of delight. Lisane leads Bazal through an inner garden of sensuality where flowers burst into flame amid deep pools of contemplation. When Bazal is not in the room with the white coverlet and the gilded bowl of rosewater, he slavishly follows Lisane with his eyes; recalling and anticipating, unaware of the workaday world. Inwardly his father smiles.

Lisane admires Bazal's rings and discovers he deals in precious and semi-precious stones. One day they drive to the building where he sorts and grades the stones he has bought.

"You have good eyesight. Would you like to sort and grade while I travel?" asks Bazal.

"I'd love to - stones fascinate me!" says Lisane, seeing her future now inextricably linked with his.

They are walking through the garden at dusk. The peacock is suddenly in their path. Motionless, he waits.

"He has a feather missing!" exclaims Bazal.

"Oh yes!" Lisane acknowledges, then hastens to change the subject.

They turn, leaving the peacock on the path. Lisane feels his eyes accusing, demanding....Why? Does he regret sacrificing one of his feathers?

In her room she sees the feather in the rosewater quiver, as though with impatience. Lisane draws Bazal to her. She shivers, experiencing a sudden chill of fear. The peacock's eye, reflected in the feather, expands in her mind like a dark dream. Uneasily, she sleeps at last, but wakes unrested with a sense of foreboding.

She starts work, handling the lovely stones, examining each through the eye glass for flaws. They are distant, ice cold between her fingers; small kaleidoscopes of shooting light.

One morning the details of a rare opal begin to blur. Lisane adjusts the eye glass but is unable to bring the stone into focus. When she looks around the laboratory, the benches, walls and floor blur too, performing a dull dance.

Lisane goes outside. The laboratory is set in another, more modest garden. The flowers, nodding in a light breeze, are not clear cut. They merge with the vague movement of a semi-abstract painting.

Lisane rubs her eyes and looks again. The sunlit day is darker. Scared now, she returns to the house.

"Bazal!" she calls.

He hurries to her. "What's wrong?"

Lisane lifts her eyes to look at him. His face is indistinct, then fades. The peacock feather spins in the rosewater. Lisane's host had neglected to tell her - and had himself forgotten - that after her wish was granted, she should return the feather to the peacock or, his injured vanity would cause him to retaliate.

The eye in the plucked feather is fixed on her as she lies on the white coverlet. But she cannot see it. She is blind.

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Neolithic men living by Swiss lakes may have been among the first to reveal the potential of the poppy. Probably for the oil they discovered in its seeds. The poppy has since been found to offer much more - from opium to a contribution to cough mixture.

When Persephone was abducted by Hades, her mother Demeter drank the juice of the poppy (papaver somniferum) to take her mind off it. And statuettes of Cretan-Mycenaean goddesses with poppy capsules have been found. The association with Demeter, who looked after the land, may spring from the poppy's numerous seeds. The poppy was known too as Aphrodite's flower, since she was also essentially linked to vegetation.

Even Hippocrates knew the power of the poppy and its opium and Dioscorides told how to make opium and warned of ineffectual imitations.

He pounded the poppy heads with leaves, crushed them in a mortar and made pills with the paste. A pill the size of a small pea would relieve pain he claimed, although an overdose would kill. It is said that Helen at Troy gave a sedative drink, that probably contained the poppy latex, called "nepenthes" to Telemachus and his cohorts to help them forget their dead soldiers.

The young capsules contain many alkaloids which are collectively known as opium, including the narcotics morphine and codeine. The latex is collected from cuts made in young green but fully grown seed pods. To intoxicate they may be smoked or chewed. Poppy seed oil used on salads is not narcotic.

The Yellow Horned Poppy (glaucium flavum), grows by the sea and may reach one metre high, flowering from May to August. Theophrastus and Dioscorides advised eating the roots to cure intestinal and urinary problems.

In Crete the Corn Poppy (papaver rhoeas) is darker than its British counterpart. It is the parent of the garden Shirley Poppy. Seeds are used as a tonic for horses by the Arabs and Turks and infusions from the fruits help coughs and are used as an eye lotion for animals. A red ink comes from the petals.

In London I grew masses of Californian Poppy (eschscholtzia californica) - a blazing annual that comes, not surprisingly, from California and Oregon. It loves the sun and moderate watering, but is not keen on being moved.

In contrast, the Iceland Poppy (papaver nudicaule) comes from subarctic parts of north America, Europe and Asia. Pale pink and papery with a yellow centre, this too likes full sun and a soil rich in lime and organic material. It also demands regular watering and appreciates an occasional feed of liquid fertiliser. If the soil is unsuitable it might get root rot.

You can easily grow the classic Corn or Shirley Poppy, whose bright red face flutters like a symbol of defiance in the sun which it relishes. It likes open cool soil with a little organic material. Water sparingly and pick the faded flowers to prolong bloom. Remove the plants as soon as they have flowered and in spring plant fresh seed.

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Ben firms in the final tulip bulb. He sees them in the spring; heads dancing in the brisk breeze; irrepressible after the snow.

Chrysanthemums are massed; explosively optimistic. Dahlias, more rarefied, turn to him neatly cultivated heads which he touches with soft reverence. The summer had been resplendent with geraniums, foxgloves, zinnias and godetia. Californian poppies had blazed at the back of the border. Busy Lizzies and petunias had flowered endlessly.

Now Ben will take his trowel to the weeds that he neglected as he lazed on the sunlit lawn. But first he sinks briefly into the deckchair. Astonished, he sees Beth, his former wife walking towards him across the garden. He hears again her suggestion that he plants a honeysuckle to spread fragrance over the wicket gate. At the end of the wide border, a cream rose tinged with pink, blooms profusely, its perfume borne seductively on the breeze. The rose had been there when he took over the garden from another keen plantsman. He did not know its name, so he called it Beth.

The wicket gate creaks open and he sees Hugh, his best friend, walking towards them. He has aged and grown fat. He is stroking his shaggy black beard and the amiability in his eyes turns to cunning and the desire for acquisition. He glides past Ben and casually takes Beth's arm, coaxing her away from the garden, away from Ben.

"No!" Ben runs after them. Hugh swings round and throws a punch. Ben totters but responds with one which is harder. Hugh goes down. But he recovers and leaps at Ben, sending him reeling this time into the flowers.

That was how it had happened ten years ago. When Ben staggers to his feet he sees a quick movement behind a red dahlia. He blinks and looks again. A tiny brown-skinned being skips into the open. She is naked with black hair like the fine web of a spider, topped by a white daisy.

Behind her comes a minute male, mirroring a human in every detail, save for ears ending in tiny points. He stares for a moment at Ben with lilac eyes. He turns to the female who has stopped skipping and is looking over her shoulder at him. She laughs - a high silver sound. He catches her round the waist with hands whose fingers end in miniature replicas of human nails. He rolls her over. She laughs again and gleefully he mounts her. Ben keeps blinking, unbelieving.

A few seconds later another brown-skinned being appears. He is fat and has a straggly black beard and darting eyes sunk in folds of flesh. He leaps onto the back of the other male and wrenches him off the squirming female. The two lock in combat; a parody of contention between full grown men. For three minutes they wrestle, rolling over and over on the fresh brown earth. Their pants of exertion are barely perceptible puffs of air.

The young male punches the older on his flat nose and he topples onto the soil. The youngster scoops up the female and stumbles with her to a nearby rabbit hole. They disappear. The old male slowly rises, rubs his bruised limbs and shuffles off in the other direction.

Ben feels his flesh shrinking. The chrysanthemums expand until they fill the sky. But it is Ben who is diminishing. He thinks of Alice in Wonderland as the flowers' leaves loom above, obliterating the light.

He looks at the hole - as big as a cave now at the back of the border. Curious, he takes a step between the flowers, sinking to his waist in the moist soil. He struggles out, towards the rabbit hole. His trowel lies like the abandoned plaything of a giant.

He reaches the hole and peers into the darkness. Silence. Thinking again about Alice, he steps inside. But he does not hurtle through space. He instantly arrives on a patch of soft grass. Around its edge sit ten of the brown beings, their arms and legs crossed, wry smiles on their faces.

They're laughing at me, thinks Ben. He stands up and smiles too.

"Who are you?" His voice is as high as when he was a baby.

The little folk titter. Clearly they do not understand. Then he sees the young male and female who had cavorted in his garden. They leap up. Although shrunken, he is twice their size but they reach to take his hand. The young male begins to hum - tunelessly but in time with a high stepping dance. The female springs on the other side and Ben, who has not danced since he was seven, imitates their steps. Round and round they dance while the seated folk clap. Ben grows dizzy. He may be small but he still feels sixty.

Gradually the fairy beings lead Ben from the grass patch through a tangle of white flowers he cannot identify into a garden aflame with rare plants. Alice in Wonderland again. But there are no croquet hoops or flamingos. And no queen demanding decapitation. Only peace. The flowers wave; multi-coloured flags, pink and blue ribbons streaming above serrated leaves, squat orange daisies with petals loosely splayed.

Ben pauses to look closer but the fairy folk urge him on along a yellow cinder path towards an enormous cream rose tinged with pink. In its centre sits another female with long fair hair and a face resembling Beth's. She smiles and beckons. Ben looks, incredulous, remembering..... His companions give him a gentle shove.

He stumbles against the thorny stem of the rose. Then the tiny woman begins to descend, pointing one elegant foot before the other; each clad in tiny slippers made from the petals of white daisies. One slips off as she nears the ground and gallantly Ben picks it up and hands it to her.

She reaches the grass and with a small curtsy takes the slipper and replaces it on her foot. Then she takes Ben's hand and skips with him round the flower, down a grassy slope to a clear green pool. Ben looks into it and sees striped fish darting among floating flowers. The fairy woman laughs and pulls him with surprising strength onto the grass. She smells of crushed flower petals and feels like moist velvet.

Ben recalls lost love and wonderful sensations and grasps her with both hands. Her lips taste like dew, her hair slithers on her shoulders. He enjoys her soft unearthliness, the pool rippling approval.

Then strong arms tug at him, pulling him off the fairy and pummelling him until he gasps for breath. It is the elderly being with the beard who separated the other happy couple. The one who looks like Hugh.

Ben pummels him back but the creature, who smells of dead leaves, rolls him over and into the pool. The striped fish streak out of the way. The floating flowers disintegrate.

Ben opens his eyes. When did he nod off in the deckchair? He had been about to weed the flower bed. Cautiously he gets up and peers behind the chrysanthemums. He sees only weeds, a disturbance of dark soil and the rabbit hole.

Ben is his former size - in no way suitable for emulating Alice. He sighs, shakes his head and bends with his trowel to uproot the bindweed. But, as he turns the autumn earth, he recalls the smell of crushed flower petals and the feel of moist velvet.

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It is ironic that some of our most beautiful flowers should have their mythical roots in brutality. Heliotrope is a chilling example. The sun god Helius gossiped about Aphrodite's faithlessness. Her husband, the lame smith god Hephaistus, was never to have her exclusively. Aphrodite responded to the gossip by encouraging Helius to lust after the mortal woman Leucothea.

But Helius had been careless. He had once made love to Clytie, Leucothea's sister. Clytie was jealous when she learned of his new love and told Orchamos, her father. He promptly buried Leucothea alive.

Helius arrived in distress and tried to penetrate the earth with his rays to revive her but he was too late. Like several other unfortunate females, she had the dubious compensation of becoming a popular plant. Helius turned her into an incense shrub.

Clytie realised she had lost her new love. She refused food and drink and wasted away beneath the soil, changing slowly into a purple-petalled flower that turned to watch the sun from the moment it rose to when it set. Clytie had become the evergreen Heliotrope. Ever since this plant has favoured full sun.

Heliotropium europaeum has arched branches with white or lilac flowers. And a good type for the garden is heliotropium arborescens from Peru, with rounded heads of small lilac flowers and textural leaves. This flowers for most of the year and favours a bright, very sheltered spot with a moistly rich, fairly compact soil. It likes well rotted organic material and regular watering.

After flowering prune it lightly and propagate by cuttings in autumn or spring.

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Why is the winged monkey poised with the regal woman in the pleated skirt? And why are other women approaching with the crocuses they have just picked? This is one of the enigmas emerging in the frescoes unearthed at Akrotiri on Santorini - where a town and its remarkable artefacts was preserved by the ash of the violent volcanic eruption some believe wiped out the Minoans.

But what was the significance of the humble crocus? The flower reappears - for instance, palely stated on the dark brown of an offering table. Crocuses are found too in Minoan Crete. The Saffron Crocus (crocus sativus) is resplendent on a mural from Hagia Triada from the south of the island.

This crocus was vital in dye-making. The large scarlet stigmas of the flowers were used to make a bright yellow dye and to make 1kg of dried saffron for this, from 100,000 to 140,000 stigmas were needed. Ancient Greeks surely did not have enough crocuses. Perhaps they imported saffron from Asia Minor. It is also used as a cooking spice. It grows unhindered in the wild but in countries from Kashmir to Spain, Iran and northern Greece, is grown commercially.

Crocus cancellatus is an autumn flowering species with white or pale lilac flowers often feathered with violet. This is found in countries from Greece to those of the Middle East. The corms are edible and are sold in the streets. And you may stumble across crocus sieberi; pinkish and exotic among coarse clods of earth.

For northeners the crocus is a symbol of spring and the promise of the cornucopia of flowers to come. The Dutch perfected the hybrid crocus, Ornamental Dutch crocuses emerging from the patient crossing of crocuses vernus, flavus, sativus, susianus and versicolor.

You can plant crocus bulbs in a light or semi-shaded place. They will grow in any soil but prefer fertile, moist sandy soil mixed with leaf mould and a little well rotted manure. You should not need to water them.

Plant varieties such as crocus asturicus and crocus cancellatus in the summer to flower in autumn and perhaps crocus chrysanthus and crocus dalmaticus in autumn to flower in early spring. Crocus laevigatus may be planted in early autumn to flower in late autumn or winter.

You can leave the bulbs in the ground for two or three years before taking them up and moving them. The small bulb offsets may be removed during the resting period and planted where you want them to grow.

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There was once a foolish mother - the nymph Oreidia - who boasted her daughter Myrtle was more beautiful than the redoubtable Aphrodite. So that goddess vengefully compelled Myrtle to fall in love and sleep with her father Theias. When he realised what he had done and she fled, he rushed after her with murder in mind. She begged the gods to turn her into a plant and in the blink of an eye, she became a myrtle bush. Nine months later the trunk burst and out sprang Adonis! The story of Myrrh, who turned appropriately into a myrrh tree, has a similar theme.

It is said that when a myrtle leaf is held to the light it appears pierced with countless needle holes. These are claimed to have been made by Phaedra, Theseus' wife, who was enraged when rejected by his son Hippolytus. In fact the holes are simply the source of myrtle oil. For others the myrtle symbolised youth and beauty and it was used to decorate sanctuaries and temples.

A mixture of berry juice and leaves produced a black hair dye. And like so many plants, myrtle also had medicinal uses. Dioscorides claimed it cured respiratory troubles, as well as spider and scorpion bites and that the juice of the cooked berries mixed with wine, soothed inflammation of the intestines. Sometimes it is still used for children with indigestion.

Less credibly, myrtle was thought to be an antidote to drunkenness - if worn as a crown! And it was popular with gold and silversmiths. A superb gold myrtle wreath was found in a royal tomb at Vergina, Macedonia in 1977. It was probably made in 340 BC.

The plant even had its own nymphs. Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, was taught by myrtle nymphs how to curdle milk for cheese, build bee-hives and cultivate the olive.

The plant was sacred to Aphrodite, who hid behind a myrtle thicket when she rose from the sea. The plant came to symbolise love, honour and peace. Athletes and other notables wore it as a wreath. In some countries the flowers are thought to bring luck to newly married couples. Bark, leaves and flowers are turned into a perfume oil and alcohol comes from the fermented berries. I remember it well in Corsica, where they have the knack of turning any fruit into the means of instant intoxication.

Myrtus communis grows in the south - usually as a shrub, but if unimpeded, can become a small tree. After bearing whiskery white flowers, it fruits with black, pea-sized berries.

A native of the Mediterranean, you may plant myrtus communis in full sun or a sunny, sheltered position. It likes open fertile ground and does not usually need watering. You may train it as a hedge as it responds well to pruning and you can propagate by seeds sown in spring or by cuttings taken in the summer and rooted in a sheltered place.

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Hyacinthus was a Spartan prince who was fancied by both Apollo and Zephyrus, the West Wind. Hyacinthus admitted his preference for Apollo. But one day when Apollo was showing him how to throw the discus, Zephyrus rose from the west, snatched the discus and hurled it at Hyacinthus' head. He collapsed and died and Apollo's tears mingled with his falling blood. Where this stained the grass, a crimson flower grew. Apollo marked it "ai" which is Greek for "alas" and named it hyacinth.

This is probably the "lily of the valleys" - the "lily that grows among thorns" in the Bible. But to us it is hyacinthus orientalis and comes from Asia Minor.

The Tassel Hyacinth (muscari comosum), which I have found growing near Maleme, appears to have once been the only wild bulb eaten in Greece. Now it is pickled or boiled and eaten whole or mashed with olive oil and wine vinegar. These bulbs are expensive because they have to be individually dug up.

A yellow Muscari (muscari macrocarpum) is native to Crete, Amorgos, the eastern Aegean islands and south western Anatolia. It smells like ripe bananas.

For planting, the hyacinthus orientalis is readily available for pots and boxes. It likes the sun and a loose, moist peaty-sandy soil. Stop watering when the flowers have finished and the plant will rest. Remove old flowering stems and when the leaves have died, lift the bulbs and store them in boxes in a well ventilated place.

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Lotus was a nymph who fled from an amorous admirer. She came to a lake and after hesitating on the bank, foiled her follower by turning into a lotus tree. A girl called Driope came to the lake with her sister and a baby and seeing the tree in full flower, picked some to make a garland for the child. But from each place where she picked, blood dripped. Terrified, she got up to run away, but could not move. Slowly her body turned to bark and she too, became a lotus tree.

The lotus was known as the Egyptian water lily and there are several kinds of water lily (nymphaea) you can grow in a pond. Nymphaea rubra, a red water lily, comes from India and will grow in soft mud rich in sedimentary organic material. You can plant it directly in the mud or in a container that can be immersed for easy feeding and propagation. The soil should be a mixture of one part clayey garden earth, one part humus, one part well-seasoned farmyard manure and one part wet river sand.

Propagate by dividing the rhizomes, cutting the tubers to pieces and putting them in 12 centimetre pots with plain loam. Then immerse them in warm water. After 30 days repot and lower into their flowering positions. Seeds can also be used.

There are nymphaea odorata, from the eastern United States, a white, short-lived water lily, nymphaea marliacea, a pale yellow horticultural hybrid and nymphaea laydekeri, another hybrid, whose bright red flowers are tinged with pink.

You can make a pool for them with a fibre glass mould and a wooden frame - like a nailed together box with top and bottom knocked out to contain the mould with space to spare.

Pour concrete into the space between the frame and the mould and remove the frame when the concrete has set. Collect shells and interesting stones from the beach to cover the concrete. Tiles set at various angles may be put on top and overlap the water's edge.

You should fill, empty and scrub the pool four times before use, especially if you plan to keep fish. Otherwise, besides your water lilies, a wide choice of aquatic plants, from water hyacinth and Japanese iris to corkscrew rush, will provide cool contemplation in the sun.

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Adonis had a tough start in life. He was put in a chest by Aphrodite and given to Persephone to hide in the Underworld. But Persephone was curious. She opened the chest, found Adonis and brought him up.

Aphrodite was jealous and a court ruled Adonis should spend four months with Persephone and four with Aphrodite, having the rest of the time to himself. But Aphrodite used her magic girdle to compel Adonis to stay with her all year.

Persephone went to Aries for help and, disguised as a boar, he gored Adonis to death. Aphrodite arrived to find the ground spattered with blood. She sprinkled it with nectar and where every drop fell, a scarlet flower grew - the first anemones.

Anemone comes from the Greek word anemos - the wind - so it is also called the windflower. People believed the wind had an erotic effect, coaxing it to open. It is known too as the anemone coronaria - the Poppy or Crown anemone. It is believed this is the "lily of the field" which "surpassed Solomon in all his glory", but several species have equal claim.

The anemone probably came from the East and has naturalised in the eastern Mediterranean. Dioscorides claimed the juice of the root, taken through the nostrils, cleared the head and the juice was said to also cure skin problems.

The anemone may be white, pale blue or mauve emboldened by deep red. The red form, coccinea and the purple, cyanea, are most common.

The plant likes damp, humus-rich soil and ample water. It rests after flowering and the rhizomes can be lifted and stored in sand or dry peat. You can sow the anemone's seed in pans or boxes in the spring and prick out seedlings to plant in early autumn, preferably in a rich loam or potting compost mixed with sand. Or you can divide the rhizomes in spring or autumn. They flower in their second year.

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The baby boy squirms and thrusts aside the shabby woollen blanket. He howls, abandoned beneath an infinity of stars. Arriving at dawn to clean the church, Hippolyta finds the child abandoned on the steps. He glows in the strengthening sun - a fragile changeling in distress who might have been left by an errant angel. Hippolyta lifts him and, suddenly silent, he scrutinises her with bottomless brown eyes.

Hippolyta, who has miscarried twice, is allowed to keep the boy whom she calls Antaeus. He grows fast with strong limbs, a mass of unruly black hair and evidence of unnerving insight.

"Who do you really belong to?" Hippolyta asks. He gazes at her with a solemnity beyond his years. Otherwise, he laughs, plays and misbehaves like any other child.

When Hippolyta touches his tiny hand, she feels the shock of extreme sensitivity, as though Antaeus perceives her need and her delight in discovering him. As he plays with the toys Hippolyta and her husband, Pholus, give him, he sometimes pauses and lifts a small face - suddenly serious - to the watchful eyes of his mother, and smiles with the reassurance of a responsible young man.

Hippolyta has the irrational suspicion he has led a previous existence - some life lost in time, in which he had another mother who taught him to respond to maternalism. And, as he grows, Hipployta sometimes finds him motionless among his story books and toys; his dark eyes dancing with reflections of foreknowledge, then focused as though on a momentous past suddenly sensed in the present.

Antaeus excels at school - although the village boys envy his good looks and the ease with which he cajoles the girls. He merely smiles at their resentment.

Then one spring day, he vanishes. Distraught - Hippolyta and Pholus scour the neighbourhood in the ageing van that takes them to and from their olive grove. After four days of futile searching, they succumb to despair and sit silently indoors.

Antaeus follows a strange compulsion that carries him from the village to the shining orange groves. He walks briskly along the winding tracks used by the orange growers, dazzled by sunlight soaking through layers of deep green leaves and creating an abstract play of shadows on the ground.

He pauses as one of the dancing shades beneath the glowing fruit, shifts into the shape of a woman; her hair spread blackly on pale shoulders. Her flimsy robe flutters in the faint breeze, exposing her exquisite limbs and, with a knowing warmth, she smiles.

"Antaeus!" she breathes - her voice soft as a subsiding west wind. She steps forward and raises long hands whose fingers flicker in the intermittent sun.

"Who are you?" asks Antaeus.

"Pyrrha - your mother," she replies.

Antaeus shivers in the sun. "How are you here?"

"I called you. You came."

"But you abandoned me - why?"

"I didn't abandon you - I always meant to find you. Your father thought I had lain with another man - that you weren't his child and would have killed you. Come back to me."

"How can I leave the mother who has looked after me so long - she will be heartbroken!" says Antaeus, " I haven't seen you for years - where have you been?"

Pyrrha is silent. She has been unable to curb her seductions - the thrill of sensual conquest as she used the fickle play of light and shade, the dimming edge of day, the ghostly fringes of water and land, to enhance her machinations.

She could not be monogamous; she was universal, elemental; an intrinsic aspect of the wild. Remorseless and remote while in the heat of hedonistic love.

"I will fight for you in court," she says and as an errant shaft of sun turns her to gold, she shimmers on the surface of existence, then is drawn like a beam of lost light into the somnolent air.

Thoughtfully, Antaeus walks home. Hippolyta opens her arms to him and Pholus shouts a welcome.

"Where have you been?" asks Hippolyta.

"I met my mother," Antaeus replies, "She will fight for me in court."

He relates the strange encounter in the orange grove. Hipployta feels her flesh contract with fear. The other woman's aura enters the stuffy room. It expands - a stifling imposition - a massing of the hot summer air laced with sensuality.

She cannot sleep. The other woman lies between her and Pholus; a potent presence redolent of orange groves and the salty essence of the sea. Hippolyta feels Pyrrha smiling - confident in the dark - a being whose flesh is not entirely tangible but melds with the drifting elements of air.

The next day, as Hippolyta sweeps the yard, Pyrrha materialises - soberly dressed in grey; the self satisfied smile still lightly on her strangely bloodless lips. Her black hair, wound loosely about her head, smells faintly of the sea. She hands Hippolyta a court summons. Hippolyta is about to voice her indignation, when Pyrrha softly folds and fades, leaving only a trace of salt on the air.

Antaeus returns from school to find Hippolyta stony-faced and still clutching the summons. Instinctively he knows what it is, and touching her arm, says "She can't take me away - she abandoned me. You are my mother."

Hipployta draws him to her and tries to smile, but, as though sensing the unearthly power Pyrrha possesses, begins to cry.

The judge's gaze repeatedly returns to Pyrrha's eyes, shot with the translucence of the summer sea. He barely hears her words but knows he cannot dismiss her claim to Antaeus. Then he hears Hipployta's plea and seeing a simple woman stunned by the appearance of this magical mother, decrees she looks after Antaeus for six months of the year, then gives him to Pyrrha for the remaining six months.

Hippolyta pales, relieved she has not entirely lost Antaeus, but consumed with sudden fear.

Antaeus feels ambivalent - loyal to Hipployta and Pholus, yet identifying with the woman of the orange grove. He is to spend the first six months with her. Tearfully, he leaves Hipployta and Pholus and is taken by Pyrrha to her white house perched on a limestone rock above the surging sea.

Antaeus watches in awe as Pyrrha appears to float about the rooms where the waves are reflected like a second sea on the white walls. Pyrrha wears diaphanous robes of green and blue, shot with gold thread that glints in the sun. She seems a woman one moment, an intangible being of the sea, the next.

She concocts strange dishes for Antaeus that melt in the mouth before yielding an unidentifiable taste. She speaks with poetic softness of how Antaeus belongs to the rocks and rich soil, the salt water and the sky. He must rise above the petty preoccupations of man.

Antaeus sits at her feet shod in silver slippers and listens to tales of gods and goddesses, bizarre transformations and amorous encounters. He learns of rustic vegetation gods inhabiting the sighing depths of damp woods, their hands as gnarled as the twisted trees, grasping the white waists of sloe-eyed nymphs.

He hears of the great sea god who stables white horses under the waves, which draw him in a golden chariot or are released to toss to and fro on the tide. And he learns of the greatest god, living on the peak of a mountain mesmerised by mist and who descends as a beast or bird in pursuit of mortal women.

"We have both lived before, you know!" says Pyrrha suddenly one day. "We shared the wild world of the gods."

Antaeus grows rapidly, his mind flowing freely, his limbs long and straight. He discovers the secrets of seduction as Pyrrha associates with young men who appear, as though soundlessly summoned, at her door.

Then he returns to Hippolyta. He warms to the simplicity and peace of her home and respects her uncomplicated gestures of love. Yet he misses the unearthly, the miraculous and the sensual potency of Pyrrha.

He seeks Pan in the nearby woods, effervescent water nymphs in the reed-thick river. And he looks to the mountains, imagining the great god Zeus, planning his next seduction among the women of the mortal world.

One day he tells Hippolyta these stories, waiting for her eyes to widen in wonder. But she merely smiles. She has heard them before. "They are myths - made up by men long ago," she says.

Antaeus is dashed. He falls silent but knows Pyrrha is right to believe in their integrity. After six months he returns to her. Her sea soft eyes are purposeful. "Antaeus, I want you to stay with me all the time," she says. "You are not like other men. You may not be immortal but you should know the wonders worked by the gods and live your life with this knowledge that will lift you from the narrow ways of men."

Antaeus tries to resist. He feels the force of Hippolyta's affection and sees her sitting in patient isolation. But, daily, Pyrrha places her long white hands on his dark, unruly head, applying gentle pressure that renders him part of her unworldly flesh.

He does not return to Hippolyta. After four days of anxious waiting, she goes to the white house on the limestone rock and sees Antaeus laughing with Pyrrha in the stone-strewn garden. "Come to me!" she pleads, struggling up the hill overlooking the sea.

Antaeus looks at her, bewildered. She is familiar yet of no significance. He turns back to Pyrrha, seeking her transparent hand. Hippolyta gazes at them in dismay and disbelief. Pyrrha gazes back - a triumphal smirk on her unearthly face.

Behind the great grey stone in the garden wall, Hippolyta finds the battered box of money she has saved throughout the years. The next day she hires Manolis, so poor he will carry out any request for a pittance, and tells him to murder Pyrrha.

Manolis goes to the white house at night, creeping through the olives to the low wall and on through cactus and tall thistle to the house, its ghostliness increased by moonlight. He finds the kitchen door unlocked and slides inside. A shadow bends over the stove in the moonlight. His sight is poor, but it must be Pyrrha checking all is well before retiring. He creeps up and, swiftly throws out his arm. But it is a man, who wrestles, writhes and cries out. Then he lies motionless on the floor.

Manolis drags the body outside and pushes it over the rocks. An unworldly wail consumes the hot night. Pyrrha appears. She reaches moonstruck fingers towards Manolis who, with an anguished cry, begins to dissolve, to lie at last like celestial dust in the silver light.

At dawn, a fragile flower that might be related to the lovely windflower or anemone of early spring, blows where the blood of Anteaus had dried on the rugged rock.

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Hera, consort of Zeus, had her work cut out keeping up with the god's infidelities. When she suspected he was after Echo, a nymph who loved to talk, she stole her speech, so Echo could only repeat the last few words said to her. That was the birth of the echo.

But Echo fell for the beautiful Narcissus, son of Cephisus the Boeotian river god and the forest nymph Liriope. She followed him everywhere, repeating his words. He rejected her, so she hid in the dark and wasted away, until only her voice remained.

Meanwhile, Narcissus fell for his own reflection in one of the springs of Helicon and starved too as he could not drag himself away. When he died the nymphs came to bury him, but found only a flower bending over the water. Today the Pheasant's Eye Narcissus still grows in Greece and from April to June is found standing alone with head bent, as though aware of its mythical origin.

It is said that Gaia created narcissus poeticus to please Hades and tempt Persephone into the Underworld. Narcissus tazetta, is known too as Polyanthus or Bunch-flowered and as the Rose of Sharon, since it grows thickly on the plains of Sharon and is gathered and brought into the house. It may well be the "rose of Isaiah" 35: 1.. "and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."

In Crete this flower may be found on coastal hillsides in the heart of winter. It has six star-like petals and a soothing scent. You can grow it in a sunny or slightly shady place in any rich, moist soil.

Plant the bulbs about 15 centimetres deep and leave them in place, although the clumps may need splitting every three or four years. They do not need watering but the soil should be lightly dug over while they rest after the leaves have died. You can propagate by taking bulblets from the parent plant while it is resting and planting them in a nursery bed, although it will be at least three years before they flower.

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LILY \- FROM BRANDYWINE TO BULLSEYE

LILIES. THEY UNFOLD WITH ELEGANCE AND COMPEL WITH A BEAUTY DESTINED TO FAST DISAPPEAR, BUT MEANWHILE, WHAT A REVELATION FOR COMPARATIVELY LITTLE LABOUR

Some gardeners grimace and say, "Lilies? They're for funerals." But associations with death cannot detract from the lily's air of the exotic tempered with grace.

No wonder they were linked to the Great Goddess who presided over just about everything in the ancient world. There is a touching tale that the first lily grew after Eve shed a tear when she was banished from Paradise.

And in the way that one association leads to another, the white lily later symbolised the Virgin Mary and became the Madonna Lily. Mary was merely another form of the Great Goddess, conveniently converted to Christianity.

Even the memory of ancient kings being killed when their term was up grew dim, as matriarchies yielded power to men. Women became second class citizens and were expected to behave. The lily's white petals symbolised Mary's purity, the golden anthers, her soul. More mundanely, many lilies on one stem meant that wheat would fetch a good price.

Practically too, when times are lean, lily bulbs can be eaten. And when sickness strikes, the plant may heal. For stings, burns and cuts, rub on a handful of crushed petals. If you suffer chilblains, abscesses or other skin problems, use a poultice made from the bulb cooked with milk and flour.

Lilies featured strikingly in Minoan art and probably had religious significance. On Crete, fine paintings of lilies were found. They have been identified as the Madonna Lily (lilium candidum) and appear with the lily-like Sea Daffodil (pancratium maritimum) which still grows wild on Cretan beaches.

The madonna lily is defined with dignified grace on a rich red ground in a fresco, from Middle Minoan times, in the House of the Lilies at Amnissos, near Heraklion in Crete.

Hellmut Baumann in his book Greek Wild Flowers, tells us that botanists believed the white lily was not native to Greece. Then, in 1916, thousands were found in the north of the country, reproducing from seeds. The cultivated white lily is sterile, so this discovery proved they grew wild in Greece.

Baumann also offers an intriguing interpretation of the "papyrus" in the fresco from the House of the Ladies in the Akrotiri excavation on Santorini. He suggests this is not papyrus, but the flattened out stamen-bearing corona of the lily-like sea daffodil. The resemblance is remarkable, although in the painting there are seven anthers, instead of six as in reality.

On a late Minoan clay sarcophagus from Paleokastro, Crete, there are two stylised, yet flowing sea daffodils and they reappear - delicately crafted with animals and fish - on a bronze Mycenaean sword of the 16th century BC. Here there are six anthers, as in nature.

From the Middle Minoan period a ritual black soapstone vase was found; the shape of lily petals in relief. Such vessels were often found in sanctuaries to the dead and contained seeds as an offering; a symbol of renewal. The close petals might be protecting the essential energy within.

And in the old palace at Phaistos, Crete, a clay rhyton shaped like a white lily, was found. The polychrome decoration contrasts light and dark; the splayed top capturing the flower's frailty.

Back to the garden - and Oriental hybrids are my first choice. I choose them for their perfumed luxury. They usually flower later than other lilies and are based on lilium x pyromania, derived from the lovely lilium auratum and lilium speciosum, from Japan.

They are mainly pink and red on white and may be flat, bowl-shaped or recurved. They are particularly susceptible to viruses, so should not be grown with other lilies.

For pale speckled beauty choose from the Imperial Silver group, with shining white flowers up to 25 centimetres across. Some flowers may be slightly flecked with crimson. Imperial Crimson has more red than white, Imperial Pink comes in shades of this tone with usually a darker line down each petal. Finally Imperial Gold has ivory white or silvery flowers with a golden yellow band on petals and crimson spots.

There are numerous other Oriental Hybrids. One of the most remarkable is Black Beauty (L. speciosum rubrum x L. henryi), which is virtually indestructible. This is dark crimson and looks almost black in some light, paling towards the petal edges. Stems may carry more than 150 flowers for up to ten weeks.

Journey's End ('Phillipa' x L. specoisum 'Gilrey') is another outstanding variety. Coming from New Zealand, this also flowers for several weeks. A rich crimson-pink pales to white at the petal edges and it is speckled with maroon-crimson.

Casa Blanca, which is bowl-shaped is a classic choice - with again, some blooms measuring 25 centimetres across. The flowers are white with a hint of green.

My second choice is the trumpet-shaped lilies. Lilium longiflorum - the Easter Lily is a lovely example and lilium regale is known to all lily growers - it was discovered by Ernest Wilson in a lonely valley in China in 1903. It flourished in freezing winter snow, extremely hot summers and violent wind storms. Yet Wilson found thousands of this species, flowering in June. Two years later bulbs were blooming in cultivation and they were to prove the most popular of the Trumpet lilies.

Among others, Blackdown Pink, bred by Derek Gardham is rich fuschia pink with a heavy perfume, Limelight has large slender blooms of a lemon yellow with a hint of lime green and the scented Royal Gold has dark maroon buds and wide-petalled golden flowers. Lilium formosanum comes from Taiwan, formerly Formosa. It is miniature, ideal for pots and odd corners. The flowers are white.

Lastly, there are the popular Asiatic Hybrids. These are the most numerous and widely grown lilies. They come with upright, outward-facing and pendant flowers. Some are speckled, others plain with vivid colours. Experiments have led to many combinations, from 'brushmark' lilies with unusual petal markings to two and three-toned and colour-edged flowers.

Among outward-facing Asiatics, there are Brandywine ('Brenda Watts' x yellow (hollandicum), a dark orange flower with red spots, Bullseye (L. dauricum x L. leichtlinii maximowiczii), that has lemon yellow flowers with brushmarks of plum red, and Fire King ((L. x hollandicum x l. x maculatum) x (crovidii x L. davidii willmottiae)), which is deep vermillion with purple spots.

Among upward-facing flowers are Grand Cru with big golden flowers and dark mahogany-maroon marks at the base of the petals, Sterling Star ('Lemon Queen' x 'Mega' x 'Edith Cecilia' x 'Croesus'), with white spotted blooms, and Mercedes of unknown parents with brilliant red pointed flowers.

There are also downward-facing Asiatics and you may choose Amber Gold, a Fiesta hybrid whose amber tone is sprinkled with maroon spots, Tiger Babies ('Pink Tiger' x mixed pink and white Asiatics), whose very strong stems may have up to 48 pinky apricot or peach flowers and Hallmark (L. cernuum x L. lancifolium) whose white flowers curve in the shape known as "Turk's Cap."

There are too Martagon Hybrids with this turban effect; lilium martagon itself is usually one of the parents. Unfortunately they are hard to get as they take longer to mature than commercial bulbs. And there is a group of hybrids that comes from combining the red Turk's Cap lily from Greece, lilium chalcedonic and the madonna lily (L. candidum). The immediate result of this cross was lilium x testaceum, a rather floppy but much sought-after pale yellow variety.

Lilies like a gritty, fast-draining compost with much humus, but they will grow in heavier soil which will probably have more nutrients and be less likely to dry out.

If you are planting in the garden, choose an open place, out of the wind, or a spot in half shade. Try to get hold of bulbs in autumn - those sold in spring are often dried-up, having been dug up the previous autumn. Pick off any dry scales.

In the garden dig deep, work the soil well and mix in some general fertiliser. If the soil is heavy, add some washed coarse sand and well rotted garden compost. The soil will need to be lime-free if you are planting Oriental Hybrids.

Dig 10 to 15 centimetres down and leave 15 centimetres between bulbs. Keep your lilies slug-free and water well, preferably avoiding the leaves. They do well when fed with tomato fertiliser.

If planting in pots be sure they are well drained. You can put washed granite chips at the bottom and use a loamy compost with plenty of coarse sand and more granite chips. These enable you to water often without the pot becoming waterlogged.

You can have a succession of flowers by either planting the same type at different times or varieties that bloom in early, mid and late summer. For instance, you may start in Spring with early flowering Asiatics, followed by the trumpet varieties, then Oriental hybrids and later flowering trumpets from freshly raised bulbs.

When propagating, you may divide the bulbs in the autumn and replant immediately. Also look for bulblets on the stems below ground. Take these off in autumn when the stem has withered. Some lilies have bulbils above the ground. These can be removed in late summer and sown in half shade 2.5 centimetres apart and covered with 2.5 centimetres of soil.

You may propagate too by taking scales from the bottom of the bulb at any time and with sterile peat and grit, pop them into a clean plastic bag. Leave them somewhere warm and after about three weeks, bulbs will start growing from the base of the scale. After another two to three weeks you can put these with sterilised compost into pots.

You may even breed your own lilies and perhaps create a new variety. Lilies are straightforward because their reproductive parts are obvious and easy to manipulate.

Choose two lilies - preferably close relatives - you would like to interbreed. On one, look for the pollen on the anthers - these lie on long stems in the centre of the flower. You can pick the anthers off with your fingers - perhaps holding them with a pair of tweezers - the pollen is very messy. Then take them to the stigma (the thick stalk in the centre of the anthers) of the other plant you have chosen and plaster the pollen over its sticky surface. Now label the flower.

Watch the ripening seed pod, so you can catch the seed when it is ready, or cover it with a fine plastic net or muslin fastened by a rubber band. The seedpod will swell and become upright. If it has remained infertile it will shrivel.

Spray developing pods with fungicide in the autumn to prevent infection. There are many varieties whose seeds will bloom after one or two years. And, who knows, you may soon be naming - and marketing - a new lily that will transform gardens for years to come.

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Gabrielle lies by the shimmering pool, her body spread in sacrifice to the sun. She hovers on a hot plane akin to the contemplation of a mystic. Yet that night she is borne through the scintillating blue of the Mediterranean, to a land of ice and fire.

Volcanoes flare like demented demons, pushing rivers of light through pastures of pristine snow. Ice soars and precariously leans; unearthly carvings by a mad hand; abstractions suggesting to the imagination, faces of an irrevocably frozen species and unstable states of mind. Endlessly the snow falls; an element of silence and sinister intent, for it covers crevasses with drops of many metres and offers the enticement of peace laced with death.

Gabrielle is not cold. But she is fearful, then fascinated, stepping through the snow towards the fire. As though protected by some benevolent spirit of the white waste, she does not fall. And she does not freeze, but begins to glide, as though her bones have grown as hollow as a bird's.

She is exhilarated and remembers now how images of snow had passed briefly through her mind as she lay by the pool; the cool complement of constant sun. Now she feels the heat of the fire and hears a roar underground.

She nears the fire and wonders why she does not burn. She steps within it where, against all logic, a snowstorm swirls. The flakes fly as though resolved to penetrate the walls of flame, then whirl into the tremulous form of a woman. Her hair is white, she wears a robe of flame touched with the faint green of an improbable spring. An unidentifiable flower blooms at her breast.

Gabrielle stares, speechless. Then finding a small cold voice asks, "Who are you?"

The woman is momentarily caught by the force of the snowstorm and lifted so she hovers above Gabrielle's head.

"Himonas, spirit of the soul's long winter." Gabrielle looks at her quizzically.

"Why am I here?"

The woman does not answer. Her face suggests she cannot. Mortals rarely cross her path. The snow stops. Flames dance closer, framing the woman's body that seems composed of a translucent element unrelated to flesh.

Perhaps I've died, thinks Gabrielle. The woman turns and treads softly towards the fuming vortex of the volcano. Gabrielle follows. Is this hell?

Gabrielle gazes into the crater. Flowers; from chrysanthemums, roses, and the huge heads of peonies to a blaze of pink azaleas, blossom in the field of fire. They are whole, untouched by the leaping flames.

"They are mine. They cannot be harmed," says Himonas "But there are flowers that seeded themselves on the rim of the crater and they are another matter. Beware!"

Gabrielle descends through the fire. She smells the flowers; diverse yet complementary perfumes borne on the hot air as though in a summer meadow; peace versus fury; cool competing with unbridled heat, like the choice between acceptance and confrontation. And she considers the snow; the symbol of negation, a death wish in the midst of life.

She reaches to pluck a rose. It moves evasively to one side. She tries to detach a blood red begonia. It shrinks out of reach. She leans to smell a jonquil. It remains motionless and she is wooed by the fine fragrance. She wades through a mass of golden poppies. They caress her cold calves. Faintly she feels the nearby flames on her face and hears the swish of Himonas's robe in her wake.

Perhaps the Garden of Eden was like this; paradise within encroaching fire and threatened by the cold threat of calamity, distorting the potential of a simple human soul. The flowers could be a glimpse of what might have been, had not man invented original sin. His church-engendered guilt had wiped out the flowers and let in the flames; consuming the spontaneity of his once innocent soul. Now Himonas reigns as a symbol of that soul's endless winter, retaining the last of the flowers, within the undying fire of unfounded frustration.

Gabrielle reaches a field of deep green. It shines in the fire light as though bemused by summer sun. The grass whispers and stirs; a reassuring respite. She walks through its coolness touched with dew and bends to run the smooth blades through her hands.

She feels her confusion evaporate as though soft fingers stroke her head, eliminating doubt and the racing thoughts she has not had since she read conflicting philosophies as a young woman.

She sinks into the grass. Himonas stands before her; her face impassive yet darkening in the leaping light. "Do not rest too long. Danger came when man believed he was safest," she warns.

Gabrielle stands up and looks around. The fires dart at the field's edge. The grass now restlessly reflects their heat. And at her feet Gabrielle thinks she sees the movement of some slim reptile that vanishes, the long grass closing behind it in collusion.

She leaves the field and enters a copse of silver birches. Their upper branches are heavy with snow. For the first time Gabrielle shivers. The fire has receded. She peers through their coldly elegant trunks but can see only snow and at the rim of the field a stand of tall white lilies. Are these the fateful flowers that seeded themselves?

She has the urge to confirm a love of guiltless living; no fall from grace, no threat of hell fire for imagined sins but everlasting life in a field of flowers.

She runs from the trees and hears Himonas utter a low cry of distress. Gabrielle sees only the tall white lilies, swaying against the lustful lick of volcanic fire. She hurries through the hindering snow; human now, unable to glide with the deception of dream.

As she nears the lilies' whiteness; the golden anthers protruding like tiny orbs of sunshine within ice, she feels again the dichotomy of innocence and man-made sin. She recalls how the first lily was said to have grown from tears shed by Eve when she was banished from the Garden of Eden.

Later the white lily was the Virgin Mary's emblem; the petals symbolising purity, the golden anthers, her soul. Hence the later name of Madonna Lily. Before Christianity, lilies were associated with the Great Goddess.

Gabrielle gazes at them; stark against the dancing fire. Suddenly, her face, like a symbol of conflicting thought, seems to split in two. She raises her hands and feels her frozen skin. It appears to be whole yet the sensation of painful division persists.

She screams and turning, briefly sees Himonas, head bowed, weeping perhaps, by the trees. Gabrielle lies down, beneath a nodding lily that gazes implacably, as the woman's body is rapidly buried by flurries of fresh snow.

Gabrielle wakes to sun streaming through her window. A dream. Relieved, she rises but is alarmed to find her limbs stiff and cold. A freezing crystal inexplicably melts on her left arm. She looks in the mirror. Her face is whole, but her eyes are wide as though, in fear, she has witnessed some terrible event.

She looks out of the window; at the lawn, already sun-drenched, the pool, a place of potentially cool contemplation and the flowers, brazen in the sun. There is a new terracotta pot by the pool. In it grow three tall white lilies, their anthers alight like the fallen suns of her dream. Their heads are turned, not to the sun, but to her. White lilies. The only flowers in her dream that did not affirm life and which came to be known as funeral flowers. She turns from the window. She runs to find the gardener.

"Remove those lilies!" she orders. He follows her trembling finger as she points to the pool. But the lilies and the terracotta pot quickly fade; drawn into the clear blue day. The sun bounces brightly off the white tiles where they had stood. Gabrielle bends, the whiteness reminiscent of the snow through which she walked. She peers closely at the tiles. Only a sickly hint of recent death remains.

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The orchid. Exotic, uncanny, once believed to promise potency. Grown as a temperamental rarity. Pampered and displayed with pride.

The seeds of these bizarrely beautiful flowers might have been dropped from another planet where plants have closer links with insects and man. For often they resemble both. They are unlike any other species and their sex life is spectacular.

Many grow wild in Crete and respond well to being cultivated, although such is their skill in self sufficient seduction, one suspects they softly mock those daring to direct their existence.

In Greece orchids lack the flamboyance of their tropical counterparts. But they are still evolving. Those the Minoans found may be radically different from the plants of today. In Greece species range from orchis italica, representing a pink-spotted satyr to orchis scolopax which might be an insect with wary eyes and black markings settled permanently on pink petals.

World-wide there are around 30,000 species, from flowers of a few millimetres to the Far Eastern grammatophyllum speciosum with stems measuring up to three metres and numerous blooms.

They are erratic individualists. Some die after flowering, others only bloom in special conditions. There are even albinos.

Writer Lawrence Durrell records making "bulb tea" in Corfu from the tubers of orchis laxiflora. The French, Spaniards and Greeks all use the Arabian word "salep" for orchids - the pulp from the tubers grown for food.

And orchids have long been considered an aphrodisiac with their pairs of rounded tubers suggesting testicles. The larger tuber, eaten by men, was thought to produce boys, the smaller tuber munched by women, daughters.

The orchis italica was no doubt dedicated to the lusty figments of men's minds as they followed the dark frolics of Dionysos. As any tree nymph would confirm, sileni and satyrs roamed the woods.

This orchid flowers on the edge of fields in April and May and may symbolise Priapos, the fertility god who protected nymphs, vineyards and gardens.

Orchis tridentate might be a company of squat Oriental women, passing the time of day in pink-spotted, wide-sleeved gowns, while orchis provincalis presents ear-like petals and a disproportionately long petal protruding like a blood-flecked tongue. Serapias cordigera has a generous red flower that hangs like an elegant eastern slipper.

The rare comperia comperiana proves that not all orchids are showmen - drooping with spidery curved flowers evoking dismay rather than flashy self confidence.

The pink Pyramidal Orchid, (anacamptis pyramidal) and barta robertiana - a giant with spiky packs of flowers, also grow in Crete.

Pollinators are usually insects and many orchids look uncannily like insects themselves, fooling those on the wing. Much of the seduction comes from their sophisticated scents. What is more, this may change during the day according to the insects the flower hopes to attract.

Some orchids, aiming to attract flies, are reminiscent of rotting meat. The flies slither down the lip onto the sexual organs. Nectar is their reward. The lips of orchids may move to pitch their pollinators inside. The Australian Flying Duck orchid even imprisons them for a time after forcing them down.

There are numerous ingenious devices, from slippery slides down which the pollinators shoot, to structures that prevent insects getting out the way they came in. Luckily an alternative route is provided.

The Bucket Orchid from Central America has honed the capturing device to a fine art. Its lip is often many centimetres wide and is shaped like a bucket with a canny collection of rods and glands to complete the trap.

A bee is a clumsy pollinator, so this and other orchids have refined their seduction technique. The bee is drawn to the fragrant flowers. It discovers an edible tissue with a tasty fluid on which it gets rapidly drunk and happily drops into the bucket. The only way out is up an uncomfortable spout and in the process the bee collects pollen or leaves some previously collected, on the stigma.

Insects are attracted too by colour and design, from petals drooping many metres along the ground to brittle packages of fragrant flowers.

If you grow orchids, split the dry bulbs and repot them, so every six months you have new growth and flowers. If planted in a bowl they should be left only half covered with soil. They will need feeding, ideally with a special orchid mix. And will need humidity, warmth and patience.

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Extend your collection with other strangely compelling flowers. Sunflowers (helianthus annuus) are freakish but likeable. They are an annual that is greedy yet easy to grow.

Some gardeners grow giant sunflowers for competition. But there is no need to be fanatical. Blooms of any size turn their heads instinctively to the sun and seem a symbol of Helius himself. They were known to have been grown in 3,000 BC in New Mexico and Arizona and were probably brought to Europe by Spanish explorers in the 16th century.

Sow seeds in spring or early summer. I put three under a jam jar, for only one may survive and the cover encourages humidity. Choose a fairly flat low lying area with rich moist soil and plant near a wall with deeper soil if the flower is really large, so it can be safely secured.

Start feeding when the flower appears. A high potash mix is a good idea. Water well. When seeds form in the centre, the head bows down like an umbrella to keep off the rain.

To harvest the seeds, take a saw and cut the stem, leaving about 20 centimetres attached to the flower. Take out the seeds and spread them to dry. Large seeds are often roasted like peanuts, some are used in confectionary and small seeds are fed to pet birds and animals. The oil, of course, is a healthy alternative to heavier fat in cooking.

The Sea Holly is beautiful on the Cretan beaches. And there is a variety you can cultivate; eryngium alpinum, the perennial Alpine Sea Holly. This has an extraordinary appearance; like blue cobwebs with hard centres. A native of southern Europe, it loves full sun and a dry, stony site or calcareous soil with a little humus. Even when dry, the flowers are appealing and last a long time. You can propagate in spring by sowing in small pots or directly in the garden.

In Greece eryngium creticum can be so prolific it turns whole fields blue. The roots are sometimes used for snake bites and the over wintering rosettes are eaten as vegetables by the Arabs. The flowering stems become light, break off and are blown away by the wind.

The evergreen Bottle Brush shrub (callistemon speciosus), comes from Australia and attracts wasps, but has an offbeat individuality. Its flowers do indeed resemble a bottle brush.

It likes to face south in a well aerated soil - acid or calcareous but not too rich. You can grow one in a pot with heath mould mixed with shredded bark or litter from the woods. Feed and water well but be prepared for the plant to die, because it does not always absorb nutrients evenly. If it survives, propagate by sowing in spring in pans or by semi-hardwood cuttings planted in sand.

The Bird of Paradise flower (sterilities reginae), an evergreen perennial, is another oddity; flamboyant and uncannily bird-like with stiff orange head feathers. There are several near my home, catching the eye among more mundane blooms in village gardens. Hailing from South Africa, this plant likes a fairly sunny spot with a deep, fertile soil and plenty of water. Propagate by dividing basal shoots in the spring.

The shrub Parrot's Beak (clianthus puniceus) is also reminiscent of a bird. This has a weird and extrovert inflorescence (the grouping of flowers on the same axis) while its foliage is delicate. A native of New Zealand, it likes sunshine and a rich, lime-free loam enhanced with fertiliser when planting. Water regularly. It may be sown in pots in the spring and by long heel cuttings of lateral shoots in spring or summer.

The Passion flowers (passiflora coerulea and passiflora quadrangularis) are perennial evergreens that might have been created by some meticulous brain with a love of outlandish symmetry. The former, coming from Peru, Argentina and Brazil, is a climbing evergreen perennial with flowers ranging from purplish blue to white. Its singularity lies in slender rays spreading within petals around a star-shaped centre whose appearance of odd devices logically combined, might have been designed by a mechanic.

It loves full sun and an ordinary soil without too much nutrient or it will produce too many leaves in relation to the flowers.

Passiflora quadrangularis is more showy with deep pink petals and a frayed brown and white circular element like Red Indian feathers. In the centre lies a pale flower that might belong to another plant. Its fruit has a thick skin with many seeds in an edible pulp.

This plant likes sun or partial shade with rich soil and plenty of water in summer. You can take cuttings in spring, summer or autumn.

For the sheer spectacle of inflorescence, grow the Glory Bower (clerodendron bungei) - a bushy shrub with a dense round head in carmine pink. Watch for strong suckers thickening the plant. A strange characteristic is the unpleasant smell of the leaves when touched.

This plant likes full sun or partial shade in a well aerated moist, sandy soil and rich feed. Water well. Propagate by seed or division, detaching root suckers. Or you can take cuttings of half ripened wood in the spring.

I remember being fascinated by Chinese lanterns (physalis alkekengi) in the garden as a child. The shrub Abutilon (abutilon megapotamicum) goes one better. Under the shape of lanterns hang delicate yellow petals and under those, protruding black-brown anthers. This plant is short lived but worth growing for its complex combination of shapes.

It is sun-loving, likes a rich topsoil and ample water. Propagate by seed or softwood or semi-hardwood cuttings in the spring or summer.

If you want a flower that opens like a butterfly, grow the Monkey flower (mimulus luteus), a bushy perennial that is brilliantly yellow with red spots. Originating in Chile, it likes brightness with a little shade. And it loves damp ground, even growing in a little water rich in decomposed organic material. If it stands in dry ground give it plenty of water.

You can sow it in the spring, divide the clumps or take cuttings from the tops of the branches which will root in pans with mixed sand and peat.

I saw a wonderful Cockscomb (celosia argentea) in the village of Afrata on the Rodhopou Peninsular in western Crete near my home. This annual is an incorrigible showman; a blazing affirmation of the here and now. Its inflorescence is created by numerous tiny red flowers clustering in a plume-like spike that spreads into a fan shape.

No one is sure where it comes from but a guess would be the tropics. Give it full sun or light shade, any kind of soil, well fed and moist. It likes a little liquid feed while growing and regular watering.

To propagate you may prick off seedlings and grow in a moderate temperature or sow directly in the garden.

Any of these unusual plants will look striking in a space of their own among less eccentric flowers and most are easy to grow. And you will no doubt become addicted to their quirkiness that cannot be categorised.

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CURIOSITIES TO CULTIVATE

There are many extraordinary species that have evolved unique qualities in the wild or through cultivation and most are easy to grow. So have a go!

SUCCULENTS

The cactus-tracker was after the drunk who shot so many holes in a giant saguaro it fell over and killed him. Reporter Kate Adie recalls her meeting in Arizona with Richard Countryman, the tracker, in her autobiography The Kindness of Strangers.

Countryman was also hot on the heels of thieves who were carrying off the huge saguaros in pick-up trucks at night, to plant in suburban gardens. So giant cacti are not invulnerable, although they are the essence of the desert, distinguishing the Western; lonely, waterless bastions of the wilderness.

When unmolested cacti are among the most curious and resourceful of plants. Often grotesque and hostile, they are an awesome paradox; perhaps bursting overnight into beautiful bloom which fades as fast as it appeared.

There is one in Gerani, where I live in western Crete, growing wild in an orange grove. Its popular name is Queen of the Night. Limply it straggles the branches, then one morning each June puts forth enormous white flowers. An artist who was staying with me picked one to paint and found it oozing with a substance like honey.

The cactus was vital to the Incas in Peru and Aztecs in ancient Mexico. The intoxicating drink "pulque" was made from the Agave and even had its own goddess: Mayahuel. Some cacti have hallucinogenic alkaloids, used in religious ceremonies to speed communication with the gods.

These plants can tolerate the toughest conditions and have evolved extraordinary shapes and defences to deal with them. They soar like ribbed monuments, spread like green stars veined with white, squat like spiny aliens or expand into rosettes with perfect symmetry; a ruse allowing maximum photosynthesis (chlorophyll absorbing sunlight and using the energy to combine water and carbon dioxide to make sugar). They often close in very dry weather to conserve moisture. Succulents developed spines when stems and leaves died because of dryness.

Why grow a plant so hostile to handle and which flowers so briefly? For a start cacti can live without water, although it is a myth that they do not like a drink. They do, provided they are dry enough. But if they do not have one, they do not die, merely lie dormant.

There is sometimes confusion between cacti and succulents. I know I prefer growing those succulents without spines, but cacti belong to the succulent family. Thickened stems, leaves and roots enable them to store water. Many absorb carbon dioxide by night instead of during the day. And they like extremes of temperature.

There is a wonderful Barbary Fig or Prickly Pear (opuntia ficus-indica) near my home; in November its huge prickly pads bear red fruit that might be performing a precarious balancing act.

This plant can grow to up to five metres tall. Christopher Columbus introduced it to Europe and the Venetians probably brought it to Crete. The fruit can be eaten but there is a peeling technique worth learning.

If you grow succulents at home you should do so before your dotage because you may have to wait some years before seeing a single flower. You will probably decide against nurturing a species such as the agave americana, the enormous plant seen on Mediterranean shores, but this is a prime example of how succulents take their time; this one needing between ten to 40 years to flower. It is known as the Century Plant, although unlikely to take as long as100 years to burst into bloom. Other species, more suitable for the home grower, flower comparatively soon. Faucaria tuberculosa with pert packs of leaves, produces yellow flowers like daisies after only two years.

In full sun you can grow such astonishing species as mammillaria hahniana - round heads with crowns of small pink flowers and wispy white growth like wedding veils. There are around 300 species coming mostly from Mexico and America, while others originate in South America and the West Indies.

Sempervivum "Bellot's Pourpre" is one of those satisfyingly symmetrical varieties, opening like a rich rosette. Echinopsis chamaecereus twists; suggesting a contortionist unable to disentangle itself, while ferocactus herrerae is the epitome of brittleness with spines like a thread left by Theseus running round the Labyrinth.

Lithops (aizoaceae) are known as "living stones" and are among the most intriguing succulents, coming from South African regions which are very dry and the light intense. They each have a pair of fat leaves which store water. They like loam based compost with sand or grit and must be well drained. The flowers that burst from the apparent stones this species resembles, are delightfully incongruous.

They need potting on every three or four years and live without feed.

Here in Crete we can grow cacti outdoors in soil that is free draining in a sunny spot away from strong winds. To avoid damage by winter rain you can build a raised bed or a sloping mound. Wearing thick gloves, tip spiny plants out of their pots by turning upside down and tapping.

If planting in pots, use a compost that is free draining yet retains moisture. If you cannot find a specialist mixture, use soil-less compost mixed with grit. A top dressing of crushed stone or small gravel helps to conserve moisture.

Never water until the plant is almost dry. Most succulents only need watering in spring or summer when they are growing. If they are indoors leave them dry in the winter.

Your plants will flourish if you feed them - a luxury they have learned to do without in the wild. In the growing season give them nitrogen for top growth, potassium for flowers and phosphorus for roots. You can buy ready made fertiliser in powder, tablet or liquid form.

Some kinds - mainly desert dwellers - like dry shade, so are ideal to keep here in the summer. Graptoveria "Debbie" has pink flower spikes in late summer, echeveria setosa is an elegant plant that grows in neat clumps and rots in the wet, while euphorbia horrida is a little sinister but striking with long red thorns. I have two Tree Aloes (aloe arborescence) in pots, that occasionally blaze with orange spikes. They originated in the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa and grow in any soil. They need little water. And I have a wonderful bed of mesembryanthemum (lampranthus emarginatus) outside my front door; pink flowers like indefatigable daisies with fat water-storing leaves. They grow on my beach too, being fond of dry, stony ground. They should only be watered in exceptionally dry conditions. But if grown in beds, you can open up the soil with a little humus, peat and sand and some well rotted organic matter. Remove dead growth in the autumn.

Among species of special interest is hawworthia. The variety adelaidensis is able to change colour. In cooler weather, when it is growing, its leaves are dark green, but when resting in the heat they turn purple-red. The tightly packed leaves look like the scales of some desert creature that has turned into a plant.

You may propagate by cuttings or division or by seed or grafting. The brittleness of many succulents means that if you break one off, roots appear at the broken end and when planted, rapidly produce a new plant. And those with rosettes produce offspring that are readily snapped off and can be planted.

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CLIMBERS: PLANTS OF TENACIOUS CUNNING

THEY SPIRAL, SCRAMBLE TWINE AND TRAIL; CLIMBERS CAN BE SECRETIVE OR UPFRONT, BUT ALWAYS UNRLENTING AND ABLE TO SURMOUNT ANY SETBACK. GROW SOME - FROM THE SIMPLE SWEET PEA TO THE LOVELY SKY VINE, BUT BEWARE,

MANY WILL WANT TO TAKE OVER!

Like their human counterparts who tenaciously seek the support of others, climbers are ruthless in finding an unsuspecting host who will tolerate their demands.

Some have bristles or barbs, others develop aerial roots pressed to a tree trunk, creating a ladder-like lattice or wrapping right round the trunk.

Then there are tendrils like corkscrews - those of the African Calabash, for instance, may be 75 centimetres long. Some tendrils have sticky discs at their ends so can glue themselves to a host and climb on a smooth surface. Often these discs enlarge on contact and become flat.

Virginia Creepers are among those whose leaf base instead of tendrils, twists and clamps. There is a wonderful example on the wall of a hotel in Gerani, where I live in western Crete, ablaze like a rich red curtain in autumn before the leaves die. And I had one in my London garden before I moved to Crete; a resplendent spread of fire before winter.

Tendrils will collapse if they find no surface to which to cling, although some, like the Rattans or Climbing Palms, even overcome this by coiling thickly on the ground and rising to become self supporting.

Tendrils react fast when they touch a surface. The first coil round a support may be finished within four minutes. And the tendril thickens to gain strength. Eventually climbers may hang dramatically, or, if they have lost their leaves, drape like old ropes from trees. They may grow more than 100 metres long. And if twined with great strength, they may even stop a dead tree falling.

I had a Honeysuckle (lonicera x brownii) in my London garden, grown by the previous owners; evergreen and sweet smelling. So, carelessly I let it grow, only to discover one day a dense and dusty wilderness of wood behind the leaves. The plant's vigour was limitless. Eventually, unable to control it or reach the top, I asked a strong-armed friend to cut it down. He did so, even unearthing the gnarled root. When I gasped, amazed at the extent of the enterprise, he thought I had wanted the root to remain and rushed off to buy another plant. So then I had to start all over again, this time keeping a close eye on its lightening growth.

The Scarlet Trumpet Honeysuckle is one of the loveliest hybrids with numerous flowers. It likes a bright to partially shady position in any soil that is rich and humus moist. But look out for snails and slugs that love damp, dark corners.

Propagate by cuttings or layering (bringing part of a branch into contact with the ground to root).

I also had a fine Nelly Moser Clematis that was not so rampant. In the sun the deciduous clematis montana from the Himalayas is spectacular. It grows vigorously, with fragrant star-like white flowers touched with pink. They are so numerous they almost cover the plant which sheds its leaves in winter.

Grow it in full sun to partial shade in a woodland type or organically rich soil. Keep it moist but well drained and water well in summer.

You can propagate by air layering, which entails enclosing a specially treated part of a branch in a sleeve until it roots. Then you detach and plant the offspring. Or you can stem layer, as with honeysuckle.

Morning Glory (ipomoea tricolor) is one of the splendours of the countryside where I live. I know a path in the orange groves, which leads to a magical glade, entirely draped in this irrepressible climber; a riot of purple that persists for months but is particularly breathtaking in June.

A native of Mexico, this plant is often grown as an annual in the garden. It likes a very light or sunny place in any kind of well-aerated, moist, rich soil. It does not mind being dry but enjoys water. You can sow it directly where you want it to flower, but keep an eye on it - the speed of growth is phenomenal.

There is also a Ground Morning Glory (convolvulus mauritanicus), a small evergreen perennial with lilac bell-shaped flowers, ideal for an old wall or rockery. Give it full sun and a fairly heavy soil. Water regularly, although, like its climbing cousin, it can tolerate dryness. You can sow it where you want it to grow or take cuttings in autumn or spring.

Thirdly, there is the annual Dwarf Morning Glory (convolvulus tricolor) which has striking and solitary flowers in purple with a white blaze and a sulphur yellow centre. The flowers open in the morning and close at night. Plant this in full sun in a preferably calcium rich soil, but it will adapt to any that is fertile. It does not like too much water or being transplanted. Sow it on the flowering site in spring.

I have a soft spot for Nasturtiums (tropaeolum majus), which comes from Latin (nasus tortus) meaning "convulsed nose" because of the pungent smell. Many grow wild around Gerani. At first they tend to hide their vivid yellow or red blooms beneath canopies of broad leaves. But I spot them early along the nearby river flowing through the bamboos, and cannot resist taking some home. Nasturtiums creep and climb and are usually grown as annuals in the garden. You can sow them on site in spring each year. You can even eat them - they are in fact a herb.

The scent of jasmine on a summer evening is synonymous with the Mediterranean. I was given a beauty by a friend and find it controllable in a large pot. The Star Jasmine (trachelospermum jasminoides) is also a climbing evergreen, which in spite of its name is not a true jasmine, but who cares? It becomes enveloped in sweetly scented flowers like small white stars.

Hailing from China, it enjoys a bright site and takes to any well-aerated, moist and fertile soil. Give it a complete mineral fertiliser and water well in summer. This is reproduced by layering or lateral shoot cuttings.

I once wanted to cover a bare fence and had heard that Russian Vine (P. baldschuanicum) was the quickest way to do it. I planted one but was alarmed at its rapid growth, realising it would swiftly cover not only the bare fence but every inch of that section covered with Virginia Creeper. So I uprooted it before it was too late. But if you are desperate for fast coverage, a pretty plant often confused with the Russian vine is the Silver Lace Vine (bilderdykia aubertii).

Clouds of white flowers bloom on elegant stems that strike out in all directions and it thrives in a sunny or partially shaded place. It takes to a moist rich soil of any kind and demands water, shedding flowers and leaves if it gets too dry. So in Crete it will certainly need some shade.

Coming from Turkestan, western China and Tibet it can be reproduced by layering or semi-hardwood cuttings in summer or autumn.

I remember Wisteria hanging over our front door when I was a child and still love its delicate falls of flowers. One comes from Japan: the deciduous wisteria floribunda, which I am sure is the variety of my childhood. The pale pink flowers are slightly scented and seek full sun or partial shade. It will need support and grows in any kind of moist, rich soil. Water well and cut back dead flowers then prune hard.

Propagate by layering in spring or summer or by root or hardwood cuttings.

The violet blue flowers of the deciduous Chinese Wisteria (wisteria sinensis) are more rounded than those of the Japanese variety. Choose a rich, moist soil and try to avoid transplantation. Water well when first planted to help it get established and prune twice; lightly in August to remove flowered growth and then hard prune in autumn or at the end of winter.

We are used to purple Buddleia but there is also a delightful Yellow Buddleia (buddleia madagascariensis) from, you have guessed - Madagascar. It thrives particularly on warm coasts. Its flowers cluster like yellow stars on stiff spikes. Grow it in full sun or partial shade. It likes a good, well-aerated garden soil, rich and moist. Feed and water it well in summer and prune hard in autumn or winter.

You can grow it in containers or large pots and create new plants by air-layering or taking semi-hardwood or hardwood cuttings in summer.

Bougainvillea Glabra is a classic in a hot climate, its brilliant purple bracts demanding hot sun, so plant it facing south. It likes a clayey sandy soil dug with manure and occasional mineral feed but water is not always needed. Propagate in the same way as the preceding climbers.

Finally, consider such beauties as the perennial Cup and Saucer Vine (cobaea scandens), its showy purple flowers resembling bells. There is too a rare white variety. This is a greedy plant, happy in sun or partial shade, needing rich soil, some liquid feed and plenty of water. But beware, this plant, whose tendrils are the prolongation of leaves, can grow 10 centimetres in a season. Sow in pots in late winter, under glass if the weather is cold.

But let us not forget the Sweet Pea (lathyrus odoratus) - a favourite annual of cottage gardeners which flourishes too on terraces. Its flowers coalesce in lilac, pink, red and white and its perfume is legendary. Plant in full sun or partial shade in moist soil enriched with organic and phosphatic-potassic minerals. Flowers are ideal for picking but otherwise, dead-head regularly. Sow them in spring where you want them to flower.

Enjoy these rigorous climbers but remember - keep the secateurs handy!

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Kudram, the architect, sees his city grow like the veins of a precious stone laid in the dust beside the snail trail of a river. For years he had visualised the re-creation of Babylon; exotic, and this time, classless; a polished combination of ancient craftsmanship and new technology.

Harassed but undaunted by a hot wind, he stands on the scaffold built to oversee the city's progress. Like an exercise in logical geometry, the foundations already describe the double walls, the inner city, the complex which was originally the sacred Esagila and where he will build, instead of temples, a computerised centre of creative diversions.

He has inherited a fortune from oil revenues and bought development rights on part of a vast eastern plain, which will accentuate the grandeur of his creation. Sophisticated irrigation will draw water from the river that flows like the Euphrates once flowed beside Babylon. Necessities will arrive by air.

The land he surveys dissolves in misty marsh and lazy lagoons with alluvial mudbanks, like those that were once the horizons of ancient Mesopotamia. In the middle distance waves a forest of whispering reeds, like the wistful inhabitants of an uncaring wilderness.

This is a country of ghostly illusions echoing that ground that bred an epic of creation; a whole cosmos with a raft of gods for whom men were mere slaves.

But this will be a city of men. No gods, vows Kudram, resisting the dusty distances dancing as though mocking his materialism. As benevolent dictator he intends to control the population. Men will respect his will in this city that will be partly an authentic replica of its predecessor and partly efficient fantasy.

The old city had a hundred gates. Kudram has designed six of the major entrances, including those that recall Ishtar, Enlil and Marduk, or Bel, - the people's god. Kudram is Marduk reversed and similarly Babylon will be called Nolybab.

Most impressive will be his re-creation, with personal variations, of the Hanging Gardens, that astounded those who visited the palace of Nebuchadnezzar within the Ishtar Gate.

For Kudram is a fanatical botanist and has long combined exquisite architecture with the effect of plants; integrating them with marble and precious stones or simulating these, as well as old brick and tiles, with modern materials. But Nolybab will be built of genuine ceramic, metal and stone.

Ancient Babylon had been dominated by the great ziggurat, within the temple complex of the Esagila. This was seventy five metres high with eight towers, one on top of the other, and a spiral running round the outside. At its summit was a temple, in which an exotic couch and golden table awaited the rumoured personal appearance of Marduk. A solitary woman watched over the room. Did she ever see him slowly materialise from the gloom or stride - confident and every dream-like detail complete - through the doorway?

And there was another temple to Marduk in which - luxuriously fashioned in gold - he was seated on a throne, made too from solid gold. There was a courtyard with numerous interconnecting rooms for the haunting presence of other gods. And when Marduk's festival was held in the New Year, the statues of gods feared and revered would be brought by boat down the river.

A great hall once glowed with alabaster and lapis lazuli, the ceiling glittering with plaques of gold and precious stones. On one piece of lapis, found when Babylon was excavated, Marduk stands on water; his tunic a mass of stars. He wears three large discs on a neck chain and on his head, a tower-like tiara with plumes. He holds a ring, sceptre and a sickle-shaped object. At his feet crouches the sirrash - a dragon.

Kudram, straining to see his city from the scaffold, wears a plain white robe to repel the heat and on his head, a square hat embroidered with geometric precision by a currently favoured mistress.

Thinking of the god, he feels the mystic musculature of Marduk influencing his own body - heavy in the sun. His white robe is fleetingly hung with stars and he has the weight of some round object on his chest. Raising his hands, he traces the lines of an intricate crown, the flutter of feathers.

He shakes himself. Architectural indulgence is one thing. Personal delusion another. He returns his attention to the activity below.

The day comes when Kudram sees the building of the Processional Way; that road of legendary splendour cutting through the city's centre, from the site of the Temple of Marduk to the Ishtar Gate.

Red and white marble blocks are laid for luxurious paving. Pale brick walls are raised to be faced with a blue lapis lazuli glaze. Each day the way grows; auspiciously wide and into the glaze on the walls is set a frieze emulating the original depictions of dragons, lions and bulls - red, white, yellow and blue.

Kudram descends from the scaffold and treads the newlaid marble with silent feet - no longer shod in leather but with the curve of embroidered silk - exotically alien; the slippers of Marduk.

Kudram closes and opens his eyes, to find his own shoes restored. Closely, he inspects the creatures created in relief and reaches the Ishtar Gate topped by bulls sculpted in yellow gold with blue manes and green horns. And there are yellow lions flecked with white - all on a blue background.

As he turns he thinks he sees a figure at the far end of the Processional Way, disappearing down a side street. Like the original inhabitants of the city he had been wearing a cloak and turban and carried a carved walking stick.

Where the Ziggurat once rose Kudram has built a shining structure with shapes like the network of a beehive, reflecting the sun in a hectic dance of light.

Inside, computers will confer to conjure a daunting diversity of sensations and sophisticated games. This is Kudram's sole concession to the present. Other buildings retain their marble, precious stones and tiles of logical precision.

Nebuchadnezzar's palace overlooks the newly planted gardens rising in ten steep tiers to the cloudless sky. The yellow bells and dark green foliage of bignonia unguis-cacti climbs recklessly up and down, hanging thickly from each tier. The elegant symmetry of a purple columbine is interspersed with the stark white of the belladonna lily and hot heads of the fierily extrovert lantana camara.

Chinese lanterns nod crinkled heads housing coral red berries and blue-veined balloon flowers open their five flat petals to the sun.

There are limpid pools, floating with water lilies; exquisite cream cups with centres flickering like yellow flame.

Kudram walks the blue tiles between the jostling beds, savouring each selected bloom, rejoicing in their transient perfection, planning perfumed alternatives to seduce the senses.

He sleeps in a small but airy room of the legendary king's palace. He watches the stars, thrown apparently at random in the night sky. He feels awed while not grasping the scientific fundamentals of the universe. Spirits of a long abandoned time and place begin to breathe.

He stands by the wide window and, looking at his robe, sees it is covered in stars. Three large discs bearing mystic signs are heavy on a chain round his neck. And as on the previous day, he feels a tiara, streaming with plumes on his head.

Leaning from the window he smells the city. It is a heady mix of incense and dust. Voices drift from faraway streets. Someone sings on the calm night air. Kudram leaves the palace, hearing small stirrings, as though of vestigial life. He steps into the hanging gardens. Flowers are closed, but faint rustlings are audible and some blooms remain vigilant in the moonlight. Other plants seem unfamiliar and softly murmur.

Kudram has read The Babylonian Creation - how Tiamat, the formless, had nonetheless spawned monsters; sea serpents with veins of venom, vain dragons, a man scorpion, a howling storm.... And he reads how Marduk challenged and defeated her single handed.

"When Tiamat heard him her wits scattered, she was possessed and shrieked aloud, her legs shook from the crotch down, she gabbled spells, muttered maledictions, while the gods of war sharpened their weapons."

Marduk threw a net over Tiamat and urged the wind Imhulla to blow in her face. She opened her mouth to suck him down, but Marduk drove him in so far, she could not shut her mouth and the wind raged in her belly. She swelled, gaped and Marduk shot an arrow that split her belly, pierced her gut and cut her womb.

What was Marduk to do with her body? He wrenched it apart and from the upper half created the sky. He skimmed spume from the sea, heaped up clouds, spindrift of wet and wind and cooling rain; the spittle of Tiamat.

He heaped mountains over the water. The Euphrates and the Tigris rose from her eyes, but he closed her nostrils and held back the springhead. He arched her tail and locked it into heaven.

Then Marduk built Babylon - the home of the gods. They worshipped him. And so will the people of my Babylon, vows Kudram.

He completes the final straight streets. He gazes at the rich reflections of stone, lustre, mosaic tiles. He will live in the reconstructed palace of Nebuchadnezzar. He moves from the small room into a large chamber where his talent for invention has run riot. The ceiling is covered with stars cut from abalone shell, the walls boast mythical beasts in relief on lapis lazuli and the floor is thick with Persian carpets whose fine, undying flowers softly succumb to his feet. At one end stands a bed of solid gold with sheets of white silk and a pillow hung with purple tassels.

Despite the carpets, the room faintly echoes as Kudram walks towards the bed. Voices whisper like ghosts discussing him. The beasts stir on their lapis ground.

Kudram shrugs. "I'm imagining things because I'm alone," he tells himself. Ghosts do not haunt new buildings.

Kudram lies down. But he cannot sleep. He feels a fluttering presence near the bed, then the tentative touch of feminine fingers. He gets up and hurries from the rustling room. He walks into the Hanging Gardens where his flowers float in the moonlight and the pools lie like liquid silver. He breathes the sweetness of jasmine, tobacco plants, night scented stocks. He is soothed, elated. The ghosts retreat.

He bends to caress a bignonia. And recoils. The leaves have a sticky mucilage and suddenly curl round and trap his finger. He tugs it free with difficulty. Alarmed, he passes on to the purple columbine. Its leaves too have changed. They now end in long pads, the moon revealing glistening hairs. Horrified, Kudram is nonetheless compelled to touch. Tentacles he had not seen swiftly fold over his hand and this time he struggles for several seconds before being able to withdraw it.

The Chinese lanterns are now jar-shaped and from a flap above their opening floats an alluring fragrance. Again Kudram is compelled to bend and touch. He feels a honey-like juice round the rim. He rapidly withdraws his hand before the plant responds.

He hears a shuffling, like roots that are stealthily growing beneath the altered leaves. A green tendril, that may be a probing root, squirms at his feet. He jumps aside and hurries to the centre of the garden. Suddenly the pale blue tiles beneath his feet split open and from the middle of the main flower bed he hears a heaving and a deep, inhuman sigh.

The moon is full and he can see clearly that an enormous plant is striving to resolve its daunting identity. Six great leaves surround a head of black spines, stretching and scraping, as though in sinister communication.

Then from their midst rises a repulsive eye, its pupil darkly penetrating and focused on Kudram, immobile among the uprooted tiles. The pupil dilates, the spines quiver and the fan of leaves undulates in agitation.

Tiamat and her horde of horrors, flash through his mind. He senses here the essence of destruction. Marduk overcame Tiamat and wrested order from chaos. But how can Kudram - unarmed and taken unawares - confront this aberration?

The grotesque growths begin to writhe and the eye of the great plant, squatting like a mockery of maternal power, swivels as though issuing some secret signal to its offspring. Another tendril twists towards Kudrum and he turns to see dozens pushing from under the plants and working with pulsating purpose along the path.

His vision expands and he sees they have large suckers that hiss as they slide towards the palace. They climb the wall tiles to the roof where they weave a suffocating web. They push inward from the walls and wind in arabesques through the windows, across the echoing chamber to his empty bed.

With serpentine deliberation, they lay themselves in layers on the silk sheets and twine tightly round the purple tassels. More roots shoot from beneath the hissing tangle and slither out of the palace and along the pristine streets. They reach the computer centre and advance like disciplined troops on the blind computers, systematically crushing each one, their suckers probing and dislodging man's minor miracle of the micro chip.

Multiplying, they move out along the wide ways, sprouting tendrils to strangle and unearth. The sharp sound of ceramics splitting and the grate of dislodged bricks shatter the silence of the night.

In the moonlight Kudram sees the city teeter amid the heaving mass of unruly roots rising and falling like a sullen sea. He turns to the proliferating mother plant. She fixes him with her malignant eye, daring him to oppose her.

Marduk did it with a bow and arrow. Kudram has only his bare hands and fury at seeing his sublime creation torn apart.

"WHY?" he shouts at the gloating mother plant. Is she the re-incarnation of Tiamat, come to wreak vengeance?

Impulsively he lunges into the flapping canopy of leaves. They impede and wrap like hair-lined rags round his feet. He climbs towards the rocking spines, grasping one now grown to three times its original height and starts to climb. It sways, trying to dislodge him but, tenaciously he clings and slowly gains height.

He halts before the audacity of the great eye, glinting demonically in the moonlight. Slowly the huge lid closes. Like a weathered rock face, its deep creases offer footholds.

Kudram steps on one and hauls himself onto the next. He is almost at the top, wondering how he can wrench the eye open and inflict a mortal wound, when the lid springs up and, helplessly, he slides to one corner. He drops like a mere grain of sand into a viscid mass, fighting it with fists clenched in panic. It seethes and is slowly closing over his head, when he leaps for the stars.......

Kudram wakes on the golden bed. The room is flooded with early sun. The beasts are composedly in place, the stars dimmed by daylight.

Shakily he climbs from the bed and crosses the carpets' passive flowers. He looks from a window. Nolybab - his unique creation - shines, in tact in the sun. He hurries outside. The gardens glow with bignonias, convolvulus, lilies. In the centre where the mother plant reared unchecked, his mixture of night-scented flowers lazily intertwine, peacefully punctuated with cool green shrubs.

A dream. He had slept after all. Tiamat has returned to the realm of outlandish folklore. He steps through his dazzling display into the centre plot. The plants pull back as though drawn by an invisible hand. And in their midst, shivering in the shade, lies a pool.

Kudram kneels and dips in a finger. The liquid is like the inside of a mutilated eye. He cannot rise. He stiffens in the sun.

And that is how the first people arriving in Nolybab, find their lifeless leader, kneeling in the middle of the garden, tightly bound by bright green tendrils. No botanist is able to name them.

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TREES FOR GODS AND GARDENERS

Trees have been worshipped, abused and admired. They have been thought to be house spirits, to prophesy and some have provided staple food for centuries. Many smaller species are ideal for the southern garden.

From acorns "mighty oaks do grow." But planting an avocado stone is quicker. Admittedly mine was in a pot so the most I have is a pleasing green plant that withers in the winter wind but regenerates at the first sign of spring.

And from witnessing the rollicking rites of goddesses to casting shade for Hippocrates as he taught young men medicine, trees have inspired fantasy and awe and, with tenacious dignity, will outlive us all.

In Crete they have suffered dire depletion, thanks mainly to palace and boat building and erosion caused by grazing goats. So those remaining are to be valued all the more, from the ubiquitous Cypress to the Cretan Palm. And, with the avocado, there are elegant species to grow in the garden.

Ancient man saw spirits peering through leaves, heard godly voices when the wind blew and even invented an alphabet based on trees used by Druids for divination.

The Oak is particularly auspicious. That which grew at Dodona in Epirus, was the oracular Tree of Zeus. Its roots were believed to be as deep below ground as its branches reached above, symbolizing the presence of the god in heaven and the Underworld.

Oak oracles were probably brought to Greece by the Achaeans. Certainly Dodona has a sense of ponderous prophecy and when I was there one September, the thunder for which it is famous - symbolic of Zeus - was rumbling like a disgruntled audience round the theatre.

Mary Renault, in her book Fire From Heaven, about Alexander the Great's childhood, writes of three old women servants in "mothy cloaks" greeting the future conqueror. She describes the votives thrust into the folds of the ancient trunk - offerings so old they had become part of the tree. There was worm and rot. Some branches had died. Sacred doves huddled and the women brought an old black and red jar depicting a priestess. Alexander was given a strip of soft lead and a bronze stylus with which he wrote out his wish and dropped it in the jar.

The power of Dodona was said to come from Egyptian Ammon, the "father of oracles." There was a settlement at Dodona in 2,500 BC and in the 18th century BC, priests and prophets dedicated a temple to Zeus and built a theatre with 17,000 seats. The site was pillaged in 219 BC by Aitolians.

The first prophecies were read in the flight of the Oracle's pigeons, later in the rustling leaves and then a marble column was built on which stood a bronze boy holding a scourge with lashes of chain that had weighted ends. These whirled in the wind, striking a cauldron. The sound echoed on hollow bronzes placed on tripods around the tree. A priest interpreted the sound of their vibrations as the will of Zeus. What an opportunity, if he was so inclined, to con the listener. Who knows what connivance with politicians and kings went on.

Alexander had another encounter with a magical tree during his conquests. This tree bore the heads of beasts and one of a woman. They spoke, criticising his ambition and told him he would die in a country far from home. A miniature from the 15th century Shah Namah shows him listening with apparently no intention of taking heed.

The oak recurs in Ovid's Metamorphosis. He recalls Orpheus being attacked by the Ciconian women and how Dionysos was distressed at losing the poet. The Thracian women who had watched the assault were "fastened to the ground, there in the woods, by means of gnarled roots. The god drew out their toes, as far as each had followed Orpheus and thrust the tips down into the solid earth. Just as a bird, finding its legs caught in the hidden snare of some cunning fowler, beats its wings when it feels itself held and tightens the bonds by frightened fluttering, so each of the women, as she became rooted to the spot, went mad with fear, and vainly tried to flee, while the tough root held her fast, preventing her attempts to pull herself away. Each one of them, as she looked for her toes, her feet and nails, saw wood spreading up her shapely legs; when she tried to smite her thighs, in token of her grief, she struck against the bark of an oak tree. Their breasts too, and likewise their shoulders turned to oak; their arms appeared to have been changed into long branches, as indeed they were - it was no illusion."

The great Plane that spread about Hippocrates on the island of Kos is indeed impressive, while needing treatment itself, with props to aid old age. It stands opposite the castle entrance and is thought to have been planted by Hippocrates 2,400 years ago. He taught students there and St Paul preached in its shade. It is said that in September children collected sea water and 40 small stones which they placed round the trunk with the wish - a true challenge to medical science - to live as long as the tree. Some people left fallen teeth by the tree, hoping for good luck and a long life!

The village of Platanias in western Crete is named after the plane tree. In Crete we have the Oriental Plane (platanus orientalis). But the most famous plane tree stands at Gortyn, where Theophrastus claims Europa was seduced by Zeus. It is said that in memory of their sacred marriage, the tree never lost its leaves. But there are 29 examples of planes on Crete that do not shed leaves. They are a mutation from the past.

The Turks hanged an orthodox Cretan priest on a plane east of Souda Bay, which they say made the tree immortal and its leaves evergreen. St. John, pursued by highwaymen, hid in the hollow trunk of a plane but was discovered and killed. That plane also, of course, kept its leaves in winter.

The oriental plane grows near water and is usually deciduous. Its huge branches may stretch as wide as it is high which can be up to 30 metres. It symbolises the acquisition of wisdom.

Xerxes, the Persian king, found a plane in the Meander Valley in Lydia that was so beautiful, he hung it with gold ornaments and appointed a guardian to watch over it.

The oriental plane is the "Chenar" of the Persians and Moghuls and was planted for shade and ornament in their gardens.

The Cypress instantly evokes Crete. The wild cypress (cupressus sempervirens) can grow into any shape and root on the hottest rock. If sheltered, it grows tall, if exposed, it develops a flag shape.

The biggest in Europe grows at the top of the Samaria Gorge in the White Mountains of Crete. Some may still consider it sacred - if only in the interests of conservation. There was a sacred sanctuary of cypresses at the Aesculapius on Kos. Anyone who felled one was fined 1,000 drachmas. Some cypresses are cut down though, and the bark used for beehive roofs. The narrow cypress is a cultivated variety and is often found in churchyards, its tip a slender spear aiming for the gods.

The Olive (olea europaea), is indispensable to the Mediterranean, although I once closely watched the progress of one planted with a surprising variety of trees in a London park. It never seemed entirely at home but it lived.

The olive is one of the oldest cultivated trees. The gods said that Attica would belong to the god who could offer the most useful present. Athena suggested the olive. Poseidon a spring of clear water. The gods voted in favour of Athena. The olive has since been her symbol. It has also come to represent victory and peace.

The tree first probably appeared around 60,000 years ago. There is evidence that in Neolithic Crete olive and other trees were worshipped. On the sarcophagus from around 1500 BC found at Agia Triada, there is an olive tree in the sacred grove behind the altar. And in Zakros, eastern Crete, edible olives 3,500 years old were found. Again on the island, in the town of Dreros, there is an inscription which obliges young men to plant and care for at least one olive tree.

Hera smoothed on its oil when about to seduce Zeus and later it was used for lighting, cooking and anointing the body at festivals. The oil is used too for making soap, in medicine and for dressing wool. And of course the fruit is eaten is countless ways, from being flavoured with herbs and spices to topping taramasalata.

Around my home Orange trees light the winter landscape; their fruit brilliant against stormy skies, the scent of their blossom drifting on the spring winds.

Oranges have evolved from three kinds; the Sweet or Common orange (citrus sinenis) and the bitter or Seville orange (citrus aurantium). Arabs may have brought the orange tree to the Mediterranean in the 10th century.

Pliny says a Willow grew outside the Cretan cave where Zeus was born. The willow was sacred to the moon goddess because this tree loves water and the goddess of the moon provided moisture and dew.

Her orgiastic bird, the wryneck or snakebird, was a spring migrant that hissed like a snake, lay flat along a branch, raised a striking crest when angry and lay white eggs. The V markings on its feathers were like those on the scales of oracular serpents. The willow was sacred to Hecate, Circe, Hera and Persephone - death aspects of the Triple Moongoddesses.

There is a wonderful Renaissance drawing from the Florentine Picture Chronicle, of Theseus and the Minotaur with a round tree, that may have been unconsciously depicted as a cosmic centre. According to the Greek philosophers Parmenides and Plato, "being" itself is round. In this drawing Theseus holds the "sphere of being" - the ball of thread given him by Ariadne - which with the Tree and the Labyrinth symbolise the unfolding of man's essential being in time and space.

Among other trees instantly associated with the south is the Fig (ficus carica), whose half ripe fruit is poisonous, but when ready, delicious and rich in sugar. When cultivated the fig has no male flowers and the fruit ripens without sexual union. But sometimes branches of the wild fig are hung in orchards and a pollinating insect (blastophaga grossorum) flies from the wild figs and enters the female cultivated fruits to lay its eggs.

In the East figs are used to treat skin infections and boils, and warts shrink if the milky juice of the fresh fruit is applied. Fig wood is pliable and has been used for making theatre seats, while the sycamores species, which grows wild in parts of the Middle East, has a durable yet light wood from which the Egyptians made mummy cases.

Tamarisks (tamarix cretica) tower on the beach near my house This tree symbolised youth and beauty and was yet another sacred to Aphrodite. It is said Myriki, daughter of Kinyas, king of Cyprus and sister of Adonis, was turned into a tamarisk.

And there are exotic trees from the south. The Persian Lilac or Indian Bead tree (melia azedarach), has poisonous yet beautiful yellow fruit whose seeds have been used to make worry beads and rosaries. Its bluish purple flowers are reminiscent of lilac.

The Silk tree (albizzia julibrissin), from northern Persia, is one of the most elegant trees to grow, with feathery leaves and white or pink flowers like sensuous strands of silk.

The Pomegranate (punica granatum) is one of the most potent symbols of fertility, good luck, health and wealth. An old custom was to break a pomegranate at the door of a house at New Year.

The pomegranate was sacred in the cult of Hera. Pausanias found a statue of her, that has since been lost, holding a pomegranate at her sanctuary in Argos. Persephone was condemned to live part of the year in the Underworld because by eating a pomegranate while she was there, she ended up marrying Hades. The fruit was sacred to Athena and Aphrodite.

The pulp is used to make soft drinks and sherbet and the rind and flowers of the unripe fruit contain a red dye.

And, of course, there is the avocado (persea americana) with which we began. This is evergreen and grows up to 20 metres. It is easy to grow - unfruiting - in the garden, but otherwise hard to cultivate because its fruit has only one seed. Each new tree grows wild and has to be grafted in July with the desired variety to produce a crop on young shoots whose seeds were planted the preceding winter.

The avocado came to Crete 20 years ago and the Department of Agriculture has experimented with hybrids to find out which best suit the Cretan climate. The trees have grown well on the plain of Mesara near Mires and on the outskirts of Hania in the west. It does need to be sheltered from the high west winds that blow here, but at least it does not need fertilising or pruning.

The tiny white flowers, with a pleasing scent, grow at the top of branches in March and April. The fruit is ready in the autumn and contains the single seed resembling an egg. The edible part surrounding it is rich in vitamins. Furniture is often made from the wood of the sturdy trunk and branches.

My avocado loses its leaves every winter but in spring, shortly after I have identified its bare twig, new leaves appear and it flourishes once more.

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The olive tree has shone for centuries in the southern sun. Its trunk has slowly grown, twisted, strengthened; an eloquent extension of the elements.

Its leaves flutter with exuberance for it is venerated and produces a fruit that has sustained man for centuries. The tree grows on the edge of the sea in the garden of Tom Darke - a writer of thrillers set in exotic places. He has planted aloes, hibiscus, bougainvillea, jasmine. And he plans a pool with rare fish where the olive stands.

Since his white-walled house is surrounded by ancient olives, he will fell the olive on the pool site. As he circles it, admiring its venerable intricacy, he coldly measures the surrounding ground for the fish pool.

The olive is wise. She perceives change, just as she foresees a coming sirocco from the south that will batter her into a frenzy and coat her leaves with sand. Or an earthquake that will rattle her old roots and break her branches. But she cannot speak to man. She can only offer, year after year, her harvest of fruit.

She has provided food, light, incense. She has cured wounds, fever and recalls when her fruit was an offering to the gods. Eirini, the goddess of peace, a daughter of Zeus and Themis, held an olive branch. It was a symbol of peace and was brought by a dove to the Ark as the flood receded.

Darke knows that a 60,000 year old fossil of a leaf was found and in Zakros, not far from where he lives, on Crete, offerings were placed in a well to appease the gods as tremors forecast a major earthquake 3,500 years ago.

He continues measuring for the pool as the olive tree shimmers in the sun. Darke goes indoors to work on his latest book. But he is compelled to take a volume of mythology from the shelf and turn to the story of the first olive tree.

Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea, had both wanted to govern Athens. The gods promised the city would be ruled by whoever offered the most valuable gift.

Poseidon confidently struck the rock by the Acropolis with his trident and out gushed fresh water. "What could be more valuable than water?" he declared.

Athena quietly smiled and stabbed her javelin three times into the earth near the rock. From it rose the first olive tree, dancing with sunlit grace and the promise of longevity. Her gift was chosen by the gods.

Amused, Darke closes the book and goes to bed. But his sleep is haunted by the blurred image of an ancient olive stirring uneasily in the breeze and softly weeping as though with winter rain. Slowly it turns into a green-grey woman, her long hair shot with the dark bloom of a ripe olive. She turns on Darke eyes rife with sorrow and recollection. He shudders and wakes with a start. Sleep evades him for the rest of the night.

But the next day he is out with his chain saw. He has selected the fish for the pool. He has designed the warm stonework for the surround, sunk with rare shells.

The olive shivers as he draws near, although the late summer air is motionless. A whisper like the faintest plea passes through her leaves. Darke feels a twinge of near compassion but denies it with a shrug.

He prepares the saw, somewhat daunted by the tree's massive trunk. He will sell the wood to a furniture maker. He starts to cut. Silently the olive weeps with pain. She sees the simple people who have relied on and loved her. They gather her fruit to appease the gods that crowd their imagination and they place it in bowls they have made from clay in the centre of their tables.

Year by year they harvest her, one family after another, passing her bounty to the next generation. She was indispensable, loved and nurtured - until now.

The saw grinds on, extracting her generous essence until her senses and the sunlight dim. She no longer reaches to the blue arc of the sky. She no longer feels the depth of her prodigious roots. When she falls she is insensible yet her leaves flutter still - fragmented silver in the sun.

As Darke extracts the saw from the trunk, it slips and strikes through his left leg. He yells with pain, grasping the shattered limb streaming with blood but not quite severed through. He hops and staggers towards the house, striving to keep the limb together.

He had not finished the myth of Poseidon and Athena. Poseidon was outraged and prevented rain falling on Athens. His son, Alirrhothios, was equally angry.

In the soft Athenian night he steals with an axe towards Athena's olive. Fearfully it murmurs and rustles moonlit leaves as Alirrhothios strikes its trunk. The axe slips, slicing cleanly through his left leg. He groans, collapses and dies before dawn.

Darke reaches the sofa but cannot reach the telephone on his desk to bring help. His blood seeps silently. His vision dims. Athena herself might be standing in the shadows, prolonging his life so he can ponder and regret. Which he does, feeling the anguish of the olive merge with his own. He tastes the bitter fruit, feels the softness of her oil, sees her leaves agitating in a dance of death. She lies inert and Darke too is slumped, lifeless, as cautiously dawn creeps into the garden.

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GARDENS OF QUARTZ AND GOLD

Speckled, striped, beautifully blotched - stones from the beach with other rocks and semi-precious minerals, placed among plants or built into rockeries, will individualise your garden or terrace.

My local beach yields a curious and eye-catching cross section of stones that I have used to complement plants on my terraces. From the purity of quartz to bold pebbles, battered by the sea, these stones lie singly or in groups around pots of flowers. They are tedious to lift when cleaning the tiles, yet are visually and texturally compelling.

For an arrangement of unsullied white, seek large quartz stones. As a complement I brought pieces of white marble back from Naxos where it is a sizable industry and glints like precious stones on the beach.

But you can buy other examples of semi-precious stones, such as Amethyst. I bought a chunk years ago in London and now it lies among petunias on the terrace. This, with Rose Quartz, might be added for a delicate touch of colour.

Quartz - pure gift of a graceless sea

whose innocence died with mermaids.

The stones; honed like virgin brides by water-borne excess

lie now - a quiet community;

stark or mineral-marked with hints of virgin blood.

Crystals - rarest

like a woman unpossessed;

every nuance dancing in ice-dark chastity.

That is part of Silica of the Sea, a poem I wrote about quartz.

Rock Crystal - is the rare and pure form of the stone. The name comes from Greek; krustallos, meaning ice, as it was thought rock crystal was permanently frozen. Do not expect to find much on the beach. It will anyway have a frosted look and need scraping and perhaps breaking to identify.

Rock crystals weighing tons have been found but material that is easy to cut is rare. Medium sized pebbles of common quartz though, whose whiteness varies but is opaque, is easy to find and always cool in the heat.

Amethyst is a lovely addition.

Amethyst - the lilac lady bringing luck,

defying magic, constant as the moon.

The poem continues.

It is not surprising that amethyst suggests the romance of the supernatural. Its depths are profound; their shimmer like a spell being cast.

Amethyst was thought to protect against drunkenness, homesickness and magic as well as bringing good luck and ensuring constancy. Again the name comes from Greek and probably means "not drunken".

Amethyst quartz is the rougher form of the stone; striped and layered with milky quartz. And you may like to buy a sample of pale Rose Quartz.

Gentle Rose,

speared with six-rayed stars

from a galaxy of lingering light at dawn.

This is a variety of opaque quartz coloured by titanium.

Mother-of-Pearl, produced by molluscs, may join the quartz to give a delicate lustre. No one is sure where the name "Pearl" came from \- it may refer to a kind of shell - perna in Latin, or to the spherical shape of a pearl - Latin: sphaerula.

Another addition, if you can find it, could be Coquina, a porous, skeletal limestone, beautifully composed of shells - often whole. And, if like me, you have a piece of marble, it will look well with these stones.

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**THE QUARTZ GARDEN**

Arrange your stones round white pots and have more prepared for succeeding displays. Or you could have three prepared flower beds. Some plants can be replaced on the same site, or flowers that will bloom in summer placed between already flowering spring plants. But it may be simpler to start from scratch with fresh pots and beds, while plants from the preceding season die down naturally. They will provide a green leaf contrast for some time. And in the south many summer flowers persist well into the autumn. One learns by trial and error how many pots or open bits of ground are needed.

Here are some suggestions for flowers to complement your stones through the seasons. There are of course prepared composts and feed that can be used in each case, although here I mention such enrichments as manure, so your garden shop can advise which brands are suitable.

These suggestions for spring and summer flowers enjoy some sun and a little shade. In spring enjoy pink Darwin Tulips (tulipa x gesneriana), from bulbs planted in the autumn. These like rich soil with plentiful watering before flowering. Later you can remove bulblets to grow more plants.

And you might like a deep pink Amaryllis (hippeastrum x hybridum) with its large trumpet-like flowers, planting the bulbs again in autumn and later, while the plant rests, selecting bulblets. This is another rich soil lover with a moderate need for water.

Finally, an unusual choice would be Cuban Lily (scilla peruviana). Tiny flowers, clustering closely on each head, range from azure to deep blue and again this is grown from bulbs in the autumn before later selecting bulblets. This too likes rich soil and plenty of water before flowering, after which it rests.

Spring is the time to sow from seed for your summer selection - where the plants are to flower or in small pots to transplant. Godetia (godetia grandiflora) is a showy annual with frilly flowers in two shades of pink. This does not transplant well, so sow the seeds in rich soil where you want them to flower. It likes liquid fertiliser while growing and plenty of water.

Lobelia (lobelia erinus) is an annual that will trail with pretty deep pink flowers whose petals bend downwards. Again use a rich soil amended with some peat and sand. Water well - preferably light spraying.

The annual Balsam (impatiens balsamina) has a purple variety which would echo the amethyst. It grows in any soil and likes constant watering with liquid feed during early development. You can sow seeds in the spring.

Add the white element of your arrangement with perhaps a Martha Washington Geranium (pelargonium x domesticum), an evergreen which should be treated as an annual. Although geraniums are sun-loving, I find mine are happier with a little shade. A rich soil mixed with some sand should suffice. Water well and alternate with liquid feed. Once you have your plant you can take cuttings in early spring or summer.

Many summer flowers in a hot climate persist throughout the warm autumn, but if you want a variation after high summer, try Hebe (hebe traversii) with its reddish-purple flowers. This can be grown from cuttings taken in the spring and likes ordinary moist soil with regular watering and a seasonal feed of organic/mineral materials.

With all these combinations it is refreshing to have a pot of variegated or plain green foliage.

And even winter can be lightened with flowering plants. Cyclamen (cyclamen persicum) is a deciduous perennial that likes moderate shade. You will probably prefer to buy a plant about to flower - choose white or pink. It is demanding to grow, but it can be sown in midsummer in boxes, then potted up at least twice to flower the following year. It likes a compost of heath mould, fibrous humus and sand in equal parts, dried powdered stable manure and a handful of dried blood. Then liquid fertiliser regularly until flowering finishes.

You could also buy a Poinsettia (euphorbia pulcherrima) with its vivid red bracts. And later meet the challenge of growing another. This too is demanding to grow, but worth the effort. You will have to divide your display of stones into two groups as, unlike the cyclamen, this plant needs full sun.

Later, as it rests, you can take hardwood cuttings and root them in sandy compost. When planted out it likes well aerated clayey-sandy soil rich in organic material with a little peat. And periodic feed with liquid mineral fertiliser. Water and spray freely as it grows but reduce after flowering, stopping altogether after 40-50 days.

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THE GOLDEN GARDEN

You might like to create a golden garden with Agate, Pyrite and Yellow Quartz. The latter, with a brown variety, can be gleaned like white quartz from the beach. You can find rough agate on the beach too but may prefer to buy a polished piece disclosing its unique qualities.

Agate - a body mixed with the effects of moss

to breathe illusions of the land

on skin washed clean with salt.

Agate comes from the Latin - Achates, a river in Sicily. Agates are "igneous" - formed by the cooling of molten rock and grow in its cavities. I talk at more length later about different kinds of rock. Agate does not fill the hole and solidify. The first solution may have been pure silica which set into colourless quartz, the succeeding solutions may have contained chemicals that coloured the stone.

Some agates are called "Fortification" because their banding resembles a fort. And there is beautiful Moss Agate (not however a true agate), with its impressions of landscapes - not formed by moss but possibly oxide of manganese. Then there is banded or striped agate, often in shades of brown, which is the one suitable for your garden.

A unique industry grew around agates in Idar-Oberstein, Germany. There they found deposits of agate and jasper, good local sandstone for the production of cutting and polishing wheels and water to work them.

Some agates are dyed, which I personally dislike, but this does emphasise the banding. Production started in Idar-Oberstein in 1548, went into decline, then revived when the first Brazilian agates arrived in 1834. Once the agate polishers had to lie flat on their stomachs on special chairs, pushing the agate hard against rotating wheels, sprinkled with water. Later, with electricity and a new way of polishing with carborumdum they could sit upright.

The Egyptians used agate for cylinder seals, cameos, ring stones and useful vessels. It was thought to protect from storms, enable one to become a estimable orator and even quench the thirst.

Tiger's Eye - a quartz-lignite aggregate - is another suitable stone for your garden of brown and gold. A chunk will reveal strata like cliffs struck by sun; dark bands alternating with a golden glow. Landscape Marble - a fine-grained limestone - with fractured layers, also gives the impression of ragged rock. It was found in Tuscany in Italy. Tufa is another brown rock which when cut reveals expressive bands like an eroded coast.

Amber is different. This is the fossilised, hardened resin of the pine tree (pinus succinifera). Pieces of this material would gleam in your garden. It was formed in the Eocene period about 50 million years ago. Chunks as big as a human head, weighing over 10 kilograms, have been found. Sometimes insects or bits of plants are trapped inside. Air bubbles and liquids that have accumulated within, may be cleared by boiling in rape seed oil.

Rub amber with a cloth and it will become electrically charged, light it with a match and it will burn. No wonder it was thought magical.

Pyrite - "Fool's Gold" - because it is easily mistaken for gold, is an iron sulphide - you may like to buy a chunk for your golden garden. Its name is again from Greek - meaning "fire" as it sparks when knocked. The Incas used pyrite for mirrors. Chalcopyrite - known as copper pyrite, is a similar mineral if you can find it. This has a more iridescent play of colours.

Add interesting brown pebbles and place round brown pots or in specially prepared beds.

For your spring display, all nurtured in well fed soil, you could have Yellow Freesias (freesia x kewensis), planted as bulbs in the autumn. Water well before flowering. They have a delicate freshness synonymous with spring and an intoxicating scent. Remove bulblets when they rest.

Peruvian Lily (alstroemeria versicolor) grows fast in well drained fertile soil, with organic manure and some slow-release minerals. Its white petals surround a beautiful centre of three yellow petals striped with brown, although the colour varies, so try to find the yellow and white variety.

This only needs water if there is no rain and is grown by seed in the spring. But water often after planting in a light, sheltered position - one reason for having a pot placed in semi-shade. And if you are planting in the garden, keep one site semi-shaded or overshadowed by greenery, for those plants unhappy with full exposure to the southern sun.

Your showpiece in this group could be Parrot Tulip (tulipa x gesneriana), an irrepressible bloom; more bizarre than beautiful and a cultivated hybrid. It comes in various colours. Look for the one that is bright yellow, streaked with red. This flower likes sun or partial shade and moderate watering. Remove the leaves when they become dry after flowering and propagate by removing bulblets when the plant rests. Temper all this colour with a plant grown for foliage.

As spring moves into summer, consider growing canna x generalis, a lovely gold bloom speckled with deep red. This likes a rich moist soil and plenty of organic manure. Water well and in autumn cut dead leaves and stems back to just above ground level, or you can lift the rhizomes to sprout in the spring and then divide them.

Add gazania nivea, a perennial, often grown as an annual or biennial, according to the climate. This pert yellow daisy-like bloom has distinctive whitish-grey leaves. It prefers sandy, humus rich soil. Water regularly, but this plant withstands the dry well. Remove old stems and leaves when it has finished flowering. Propagate by clump division in spring or autumn or sow seed in early spring.

A third plant might be Dwarf Pomegranate (punica granatum) with its orange trumpet-shaped blooms and bright green leaves. This likes the sun and any kind of moist soil with an occasional feed of general organic/mineral fertiliser and regular watering. If you grow from seed though, you will have to wait because after sowing in pots, the plant will take two years to flower. The foliage, however, would be a fine contrast with the colourful flowers.

You can continue your display in autumn with Chrysanthemums (chrysanthemum x indicum), like an inspiring assertion of the sun before winter. When I moved into my London house, the garden was rife with enormous yellow blooms. I picked armfuls and put them all over the house which was bare, since I had little furniture - only a few sticks bought from the previous owners! My spirits instantly rose.

The wild Chrysanthemum came from China where it was grown as long ago as 500 BC. It was another 1,000 years before it became the native flower of Japan. The Chinese and Japanese are still the best growers of this flower, producing numerous huge blooms on a single plant. Today it is almost unknown in the wild but is widely cultivated for cutting.

These plants are classified according to the shape of the flower but unfortunately the classifications vary from one country to another.

Plant yellow or orange chrysanthemums in rich soil in the sun. They like liquid feed, needing much nitrogen. They are "short-day" plants - light sensitive and producing buds only as the days grow shorter. But growers produce them all year by artificially controlling the temperature and light.

If you want to grow large flowers - up to 15 centimetres in diameter, pinch out four to six pairs of leaves by removing the growing tip when the plant has produced about 10 pairs of leaves in May. Then lateral shoots appear and these will give you the flowers. You must select the number you need, in equal lengths from the sturdiest shoots, removing the rest. All subsequent lateral shoots, apart from those you want to flower, must be removed.

Tiny buds will appear on the selected stems. Leave only the main ones in the middle. This is known as "disbudding". Propagate by cuttings from shoots springing from the roots when they have produced four or five leaves. Root these in sand in late winter. This is a hard plant to grow, so you may prefer to buy it ready grown, but most gardeners I know enjoy a challenge!

In London I grew African Marigolds (tagetes erecta) from seed in the spring, in my apology for a conservatory. It was always a thrill to see the seedlings appear and eventually the large resplendently yellow flowers.

This annual is not the sweetest smelling, but it is compact and impressive. It needs the sun and will grow in any soil, appreciating a feed of organic material, as well as liquid fertiliser during the early stages of growth. Water well.

For the orange glow that will enrich your display the French Marigold (tagetes patula) is prolific and long flowering. Its needs are similar to those of the African Marigold and the plants should be removed after flowering.

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THE ROCK GARDEN

By this, I do not mean that you have to build the rocks into a conventional rock garden, although this is always rewarding. But you may simply place selected rocks, as in the Quartz and Golden Gardens, around pots or plants grown in beds.

How you obtain your rocks is another matter. Garden specialists can no doubt find those most commonly used for rockeries and in Crete we have a variety of decorative rocks and stone facings, whose offcuts may be gleaned from building sites or specially ordered.

There are three types of rock: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. Igneous rocks are formed by the cooling of molten rock, which was liquefied by heat and pressure deep in Earth's mantle. Below the surface it is known as magma and above, lava. Igneous rocks have various textures, from crystalline and glassy to a bubbly appearance. They often contain mineral crystals, such as clear green olivine.

Metamorphic rocks have been physically and perhaps chemically changed due to intense heat, pressure, or the action of hot fluids. So in these rocks you find fractures, folds and various faults. Sometimes stretched or crushed fossils are trapped and they may contain garnet, tourmaline or serpentine.

Sedimentary rocks are formed by "lithification" which is the hardening of loose, fragmented materials or by "precipitation" which produces crystals in water that collect in aggregates. So most of these rocks are layered. Some, including the stalactites in caves, are layered aggregates of crystals.

If you can find it, or perhaps have a geologist friend - Breccia is a particularly attractive sedimentary rock, made mainly of poorly sorted gravel (grains larger than sand) which, if mixed with limestone and calcite, has a speckled blue-brown surface.

Arkose is a lovely sandstone, another sedimentary rock, that might be scattered with feldspar grains from pre-existing rocks. If made from potassium these will be pink - a wonderful rock among flowers.

Some rock - such as Conglomerate - another sedimentary rock - can be found as large pebbles on the beach. This rock is mostly rounded gravel that is poorly sorted. The gravel may be cemented with hematite - an oxide of iron with a red-brown streak. This is known too as Bloodstone - the name yet again from the Greek, alluding to "blood", reflecting its colour when cut. Not surprisingly, hematite was used as an amulet against bleeding.

Basalt is another dramatic rock - ideal as a foil for bright colour. I brought a black lump back from the volcano on Santorini. This igneous rock - solidified lava - is dark grey to black, riddled with holes and much evidence of having suffered the violence of the volcano. As the lava cooled too quickly for it to crystallise completely, the tiny crystals in the rock can only be seen under a microscope. This is a very hard, compact rock. Rub it down and you will feel its smoothness. Sometimes, as it is cooling, it forms hexagonal columns. It will not grind down from a boulder to a pebble, but will break into fragments.

Obsidian is another black igneous rock composed of volcanic glass. This forms when lava cools very suddenly or is quenched. Some obsidian contains feldspar crystals, giving it a glittery reflection - known as "golden sheen" obsidian.

I have made summer selections for flowers that will complement these distinctive rocks and you can of course experiment with spring and winter colour too.

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**THE BASALT GARDEN**

Among your volcanic rocks plant the vivid red African Daisy (arctotis x hybrida) in a sunny spot. This is a perennial usually treated as an annual. Give it rich damp soil and organic feed in the spring as it grows, with plenty of water. Sow by seed in the spring.

I usually have a yellow Begonia (begonia x tuberhybrida) on my terrace from early summer onwards. And one of these would stand out well against the black rock. This is a perennial that prefers partial shade and a well drained light, rich soil and plenty of water. When it stops flowering, let it die back and keep its tubers in dry peat indoors through the winter.

A third choice is the incomparable blue of the Gentian (gentiana acaulis), a small, shade-loving perennial which would look best in a rockery of basalt. It is fond of a moist woodland type soil and ample water. You can propagate by late summer sowing in woodland mould enriched with humus.

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THE CONGLOMERATE GARDEN

To accompany this particularly textural rock, plant Verbena x hybrida , a perennial grown as an annual, with clustered heads of flowers in a soft red that enjoy the sun and a light soil and liquid fertiliser now and then before flowering. Sow seed in late winter or spring.

Choose white Sweet Alyssum (lobularia maritima) to break up bright colour. Plant in full sun or partial shade, in dry lime-rich soil. This perennial plant also likes crevices, so could be placed in a pot on a small rockery built from the conglomerate. Do not water. Remove flower heads after each flowering to encourage continuous blooms. Sow by seed in the spring.

Pale pink gladiolus x gandavensis could be your third flower, the colour of this showy, upright bloom, reflecting the sometimes pinkish element in the conglomerate. Plant in full sun by cormels sown in the spring or by seed to discover new varieties. This will grow in any soil that is slightly acid, rich and moist. Water well. Lift the corms in autumn and allow them to dry out.

You may like to make a mosaic in a tray to place among your rocks and stones, with small beach pebbles and bought semi-precious stones. Pebble mosaics appeared on the floors of Greek houses about 400 BC. The compositions were somewhat linear until the techniques of shading and basic perspective were mastered. But they had the appeal of intricate workmanship. Subjects were usually classical such as Bellerophon on Pegasus attacking the Chimaera, made in the 4thcentury BC at a house in Olynthus, northern Greece. I am not suggesting you produce a full scale classic, but simple abstract designs or the images of flowers are not difficult to depict.

There are numerous semi-precious and natural stones suggesting a garden of coalescing colour. Experiment and change arrangements according to your mood and the needs of your plants. And disclose the beauty of simple beach stones among those polished for posterity.

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A PALETTE OF PLANTS

We crave colour in our garden and a confusion of flowers will provide it. But how much more we may achieve with experiment and a look at how artists use colour to stunning effect

You have only to look at an Impressionist painting to enjoy the light coalescence of colour. Or consider the vivid combinations, unrelated to reality created by the Fauvists (Wild Beasts), led by Henri Matisse.

Buy a simple box of water colours - if you do not already have one - and, on a thick piece of paper, dab a selection of shades you would like to see in the garden. Try mixing colours too. Decide on combinations and contrasts, then choose the plants that will reflect them and draw a plan of what you will plant where.

Late in life Matisse used plant shapes in elemental liaison, mixing red, blue, gold, yellow, green and black; proving that even harsh relationships can visually entice.

You may like such positive combinations by instinct or you may have seasonal moods and radically change the effect throughout the year. With the distinction of spring versus summer flowers, it is simple to move through succeeding whims. Colour can become a game and a constantly changing means of visual delight. Even representational paintings may be turned to merging colour and fresh form if you look at them with half closed eyes. Artists - especially those using geometric concepts - can also suggest shapes, which you may echo when you dig flower beds or place pots.

With strong colours in mind, there is the daring of Emile Nolde in his painting The Lemon Grove of 1933. There is nothing reminiscent here of our Cretan groves, but a rich deviation from the mundane; a green-faced woman wearing white with flaming hair and above her, the scintillating yellow of lemons. Her consort is brown as the earth, while a hint of mauve hovers behind the woman's head.

What colours for the garden! Imagine the orange perennial canarina canaries against perhaps an actual lemon tree. Its veined, bell-shaped flowers appear in late winter and spring. This plant likes partial shade, sheltered from the wind and rain and a light rich permeable compost. Remove the stems when they dry out. If supported, it is suitable for a pot plant. Sow seed in late summer and later divide the clumps.

If you have no lemon tree, plant Dusty Miller (senecio cineraria) which flowers in the spring and summer. This has a silvery down on leaves and stems and likes the sun. It is happy near the sea and grows in any well aerated soil that is moist and fertile. But it survives dryness well. Dead and exhausted growth should be removed after flowering. Take cuttings in spring or summer and clump divide in autumn.

A plant with pale green foliage would complement the flame and yellow and, with the brown earth, echo Nolde's picture.

Or use the airily potent colours of Kasimir Malevich; a marriage of deep blue, gold, green, pink, purple and red in his Supremist Composition of 1915. He scatters decisive yet buoyant squares, oblongs and elongated rectangles; happy variations, whose shapes could be echoed in flower beds. You might grow Spiderwort (tradescantia x andersoniana), a short-lived perennial, with its three broad blue petals and yellow tipped stamens in a square bed set at an angle to a long rectangle planted with several shrubs of streptosolen jamesonii.

Spiderwort is a perennial that likes a bright, partially shaded spot. It grows in almost any soil that is open, humus rich and very moist. Water well and give it some organic dressing. It is also suitable for a pot plant. Propagate by clump division or seed sowing in the spring.

Streptosolen jamesonii is a bushy evergreen shrub with clusters of pale orange blooms. It is fond of warm coastal areas and ishor climates the south long flowering in summer and autumn. Grow it in the sun in rich soil and water regularly. Propagate by half ripe cuttings in the summer.

You may decide on strong yet subtly muted tones, as in one of the many paintings of Mount Saint Victoire by Paul Cezanne. Here a quiet green and soft gold co-exist with tender brown; as though the countryside sleeps. The leaves of your plants will provide the green among blooms of pensive gold with perhaps dark-leaved Painted Nettle (coleus blumei).

This is a perennial but is often grown as an annual and has a remarkable range of coloured foliage. The bronzy variety would look well here. Nip out any flowers because these drain its strength, although I had a bronze nettle on which I left the pale blue flowers because they were such a pleasing contrast.

It thrives best in summer, in sun or light shade, but I keep some all year in pots by moving them to the south side of the house. This plant likes well aerated, moist, sandy soil that is well manured. Water well. Sow seed in late winter and take cuttings in summer or autumn to root in a warm place.

The orangey gold of the painting may come from the splendour of Crown Imperial (fritillaria imperialis) grown from a large bulb. It flowers in spring and early summer with dramatic groups of petals at the base of generous foliage on a stem that may grow more than a metre high. It likes slight shade and any fertile, moist well-drained garden soil. Plant the bulb at a depth of 20 centimetres and feed with bone meal. Water regularly and after flowering cut down the stems. You can remove and re-plant bulblets when the plants rests. It is rather demanding to grow.

Forget-me-nots (myosotis alpestris), on the other hand, are simple and could provide the blue of Cezanne's mountain and sky. Small blooms cluster among the leaves of this perennial plant, flowering in spring and summer. This too likes moderate shade and any moist, fertile soil. Water well and take up the plants after flowering. You can sow the seed where it is to grow in the spring and it self sows freely. This plant can also be grown in pots.

Raoul Dufy was decorative with a sound sense of colour. The Artist and his Model in the Studio painted in 1929 is a seductive image of scarlet, pale and deeper blues, gold and green; an effect between the brash and the retiring.

Reflecting this in your garden, arresting red Geraniums (pelargonium zonale) could nestle between sky-blue Cornflowers (centaurea cyanus), grown annually, Pot Marigolds (calendula officinalis), a bushy annual and the green of a plant not in flower or grown primarily for foliage.

The geranium is the gardener's loyal stand-by, cheerfully suffering almost any privation and often flowering from spring to autumn. In the south this period is even longer - it is even happiest during the rain of winter. This is a perennial usually grown as an annual, but mine go on for years. Many hybrids have come from the original species. Grow in the sun in fertile soil, although the geranium will tolerate more kinds than most. Water regularly in summer, less often in autumn and winter.

It is best renewed every two or three years and dead growth removed in spring. Take cuttings or sow seeds in late winter.

The Cornflower has the clear Mediterranean blue captured so well by Dufy. Known too as Bachelor's Button, Ragged Robin and Blue Bottle, this is an annual with distinctive, pointed petals. Plant in the sun. Rich, moist, yet slightly light soil is preferable. Water regularly and sow seeds in spring where you want them to flower.

Pot Marigolds can of course also be grown in the garden. They will reflect the one gold triangle in Dufy's work and can be sown to flower in spring, summer or autumn, depending on climate and the time of sowing. This is a bushy, sun-loving annual and is not fussy about soil, although it likes organic and liquid feed as well as plenty of water.

Moving to a gentler mood and returning to Matisse, in 1904 he played with a softer mix of pink, yellow, blue, purple, red and green in his painting Lux, Calme et Volupt(. The combination sounds cumbrous, but by using short dashes of colour, his palette shines with light. One can imagine such shades in the garden; with green plants between the stronger colours. Wild Senna (cassia marilandica) will give you soft yellow, Blue Globe Thistles (echinops ritro) the pensive blue and a mix of pink and red comes with Sweet William (dianthus barbatus). Perennial Phlox (phlox paniculata) is available in a shade of violet-purple.

Wild Senna is a shrubby perennial, with cup-shaped blooms, flowering in a sunny place in summer in any rich soil. It can withstand dryness but feed well and prune quite hard to improve flowering the following year. Sow seed or take cuttings in the spring.

Blue Globe Thistles with their rounded, compact heads, are perennial, flowering in summer and autumn. They like the sun with a little shade. They take to any soil which is fairly fertile and only need watering occasionally in dry weather. And they will naturalise if desired. When the flowers finish cut back their stems to ground level. You can divide this plant in the spring or sow fresh seed.

Sweet William is usually grown as a biennial to flower in spring and summer. It has numerous dense flowers recalling Matisse's brushstrokes. It likes calcareous or clayey soil mixed with woodland mould, well rotted organic manure and a little sand. Water regularly with a few liquid feeds in the early growing period. Put out young plants in the autumn.

Perennial Phlox with clustered heads of flowers, likes the sun and flowers from summer to autumn. Work in organic material before planting in a rich soil with low clay content mixed with peat and sand. Apply liquid fertiliser while it grows. Water well. Cut down to ground level in winter and propagate by dividing clumps in spring.

You may like the peace of a delicate, almost pastel garden, given substance with a touch of deeper colour.

Fernand Leger took a pretty strong stance in most of his work but the other day I came across a reproduction of Woman in Blue - a work of 1912, in which the woman is lost in analytical elements which nonetheless form a rhythmically balanced impression with delicate tones of lavender, shell pink, a restrained flame and the neutrality of stone. The effect is soothing yet decisive and even these shapes may be adapted to some extent when planning a garden.

They are not strictly geometric but include circles sliced with sides out of kilter, rectangles half buried in the stone-like imagery and truncated triangles. Dig some interesting shapes based on these and plant pale pink Busy Lizzie (impatiens walleriana) which flowers all summer and is a perennial usually grown as an annual. It needs plenty of water and not too much sun. Orange may be provided by the perennial Blanketflower (gaillardia aristata) which loves the sun. Costa Rican Nightshade (solanum wendlandii) has lilac blue flowers, and pebbles between the plants will echo Leger's suggestion of stone.

Busy Lizzie is long flowering with medium sized clustered blooms. I had plants in flower for months in the sun or semi-shade in my London garden, but in Crete I have to keep this plant in the shade. It likes argillaceous soil with leaf mould, matured manure and sand. Liquid feed helps during growth. Sow in the spring or take cuttings in autumn or spring.

Blanketflower blooms in late spring and summer in well aerated, moist, sandy soil. Do not feed much or the plant will collapse. But water well and cut down stems in autumn. Sow in spring in boxes and prick out seedlings before planting.

Costa Rican Nightshade is a climbing, semi-evergreen shrub, with a mass of frilly flowers from summer to autumn. It prefers a light, slightly shady site and likes a humus-rich soil and regular watering. Prune in autumn. Fertilise occasionally. You can take unripe shoots as cuttings in spring and summer or sow in the spring in small pots.

Look too for images of flowers on fabric and pottery. I have a silk scarf replicating the Rose Window in Chartres Cathedral. I am not a believer, and never thought I would wear a church window round my neck, but the colours that inspired the stained glass artist to reproduce this rose whole and in segments, were irresistible. They veer from deep pink to blue, lilac and green. A touch of yellow does not detract but adds vivacity.

The shapes of leaves are placed round the perimeter of the rose and fragments of flexible triangles, circles and ovals complete the stunning composition. Again, it is shape as well as colour that may be an inspiration when digging flower beds or placing pots.

Why not echo the beauty of the scarf and plant roses. One deep pink variety, reflecting the Rose Window, is Madame Edouard Herriot; a densely petalled hybrid tea rose.

Roses will adapt to almost any soil but particularly appreciate one that is rich; sandy, moist and with a slight acidity, exposed to the sun. Dig to at least 35 centimetres about a month before planting. Organic manure and a slow acting mineral fertiliser should be added.

If the roots of your bush are dry, soak them for up to 12 hours in water and argillaceous soil mixed with cow manure. Keep the roots plastered with this when you plant out.

Place good compost at the base of the hole, spread out the roots and cover them with more but finer planting compost. Press it well down round the stem but keep stock and crown at soil level. Dig in organic compost towards the end of winter or early spring and give complete mineral fertiliser in spring. Roses stand up well to dryness but when you do water, try to avoid spilling it on leaves and flowers as this may cause disease.

Place your roses perhaps in a round bed, as depicted in the cathedral window, surrounded by small beds of playful geometry, with purple, blue and yellow flowers.

Purple might be provided by the European Columbine (aquilegia vulgaris). This is a lovely perennial with elegant petals and pale yellow stamens, flowering in spring and summer. It likes a bright or semi-shaded spot and the light sandy soil found in woods. It will not tolerate dryness, so water well. Cut back stems and dry leaves in autumn and sow in spring in light compost.

For yellow, try Firethorn (pyracantha crenulata), a spiny evergreen shrub that flowers in spring in full sun or slight shade. It grows in any soil and appreciates plenty of water when the weather is dry. Give it some organic manure in spring. This plant can be grown as a hedge, a bush or small tree - in which case only remove dead and distorted branches. Sow in spring in a sheltered bed.

Pasqueflower (pulsatilla vulgaris) will burst into a blue, six-petalled flower with bright yellow stamens, in late spring and early summer. This perennial likes a moist, shady place in rich soil. Water when it is very dry and sow in pots in spring.

I have a Chinese jacket embroidered with slightly stylised plum blossom that suggests more shapes for flower beds. The outline of one or more of the four petals of each bloom, could be dug; the thick white rim becoming perhaps a mass of flowers such as Candytuft (iberis saxatilis), a perennial, its neat heads growing 10 to 15 centimetres high, while within, red and pink flowers are evenly spaced - maybe Maiden Pink (dianthus deltoides), a tufted perennial with prettily serrated petals and the annual Yellow Cosmos (cosmos sulphureous). There is a red variety with a yellow centre that would be suitable.

Candytuft, an annual that can be chosen in white, will flower in spring and summer and loves the sun. Any kind of soil is suitable but a preference is for one that is calcareous or siliceous and moist and fairly fertile. Do not over water and remember to pull up the flowers when they are over. Sow seeds on site in spring.

Choose a pink variety of Maiden Pink and plant in the sun in sandy, very dry soil, not necessarily fertile. Do not water much. Sow in spring in small pots.

Yellow (in this case red) Cosmos also loves the sun and has numerous flowers that like fertile soil, plenty of water and light organic or mineral feeding. It can grow up to a metre so needs support. Sow in spring.

On the jacket the bottom part of the flower has a green and yellow surround. So variegated plants, with yellowy green leaves would be ideal. In the centre of this plot you could plant a lilac flower such as Italian Aster (aster amellus), a bushy perennial with a pert, yellow-centred daisy face. This sun-loving plant will flower in late summer and early autumn in a deep, rich soil. It needs phosphates, nitrogen and potash and generous watering. You can sow in boxes in spring or divide clumps in spring and autumn.

I have mentioned ideal requirements for each plant and if you are a purist and can obtain them, each element, from bone meal to cow manure, may be applied according to need to each bed of flowers. But commercial feeds - in dry and liquid form - provide most of the nutrients needed.

Knowing individual ingredients may help you choose the right mix at the garden shop or centre, but I have grown a wide range of flowers with a simple regard to sun or shade and the amount of water required. A regular feed of general fertiliser is, of course, a help, unless your plant is one of those that does not need it. A simple feed is often all you can find anyway in comparatively remote places. Even without feed and within the restriction of pots, simple plants usually perform well in warm climates. But it must be remembered that those liking partial shade in northern Europe, will probably need complete shade in the south and even some sun-lovers may have to be watched in high summer.

Experiment and makes notes as to plants' reactions and needs. You never know - you may create a garden that goes down in horticultural - and artistic \- history!

**Thank you for reading this book - which I hope you have enjoyed.**

If you would like to read my other work, please return to your favourite ebook retailer. For a complete list of my work with a short summary of each, click this link to my blog http://lindajtalbot.wordpress.com. There are also sample extracts from many of these works. You are welcome to subscribe or add a comment.

A review of any of my works at smashwords.com, or elsewhere, would be much appreciated.

Author's Note

Linda Talbot writes fantasy for adults and children. She now lives in Crete and as a journalist in London she specialised in reviewing art, books and theatre, contributing a chapter to a book about Conroy Maddox, the British Surrealist and writing about art for Topos, the German landscape magazine. She has published "Fantasy Book of Food", rhymes, recipes and stories for children; "Five Rides by a River", about life, past and present around the River Waveney in Suffolk; short stories for the British Fantasy Society, and stories and poetry for magazines.

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