A plant to make a man as merry as a cricket

The garden is all heat and light on this summer afternoon, pulsing and multi-layered with insect sounds and constant movement.

Wild flowers jostle with the cultivated, in varieties chosen for their nectar and pollen. Bumblebees wiggle up into the blue throats of viper’s bugloss, hoverflies taste scabious, dabbing with their tongues, soldier beetles clamber over wild carrot, bumping into each other before hurriedly parting.

I grow white rosebay willowherb, food plant of the elephant hawk-moth caterpillar, and greater bellflower, which lives on woodland edges and river banks in the north of England.

Threading through these flower borders is melancholy thistle, Cirsium heterophyllum. Another northern species, once abundant in upland hay meadows, it has found sanctuary on roadsides.

Drive through the north Pennines in July and the banks and verges are an exhilaration of purple flowers. In my garden they stand above geraniums and alliums on tall dark ridged stems that are coated in cottony hairs. On a gusty day, the wind flips up the leaves revealing silver undersides. They are soft and unprotected by spines. Read more