ELDER, CRABAPPLE, HYDRANGEA
SEPTEMBER
Beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis)
Crab apple (Malus)
Elder (Sambucus nigra)
Flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum)
Honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum)
Panicled hydrangea (Hydrangea)
Quince (Cydonia oblonga)
Rose (Rosa ‘For Your Eyes Only’ & ‘Orienta Magnolia’)
Traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba)
Low stoneware dish
Kenzan
Cap of chicken wire
NOTES
Clematis vitalba is a wild clematis that grows like mad throughout the hedgerows and countryside surrounding our cutting garden in Hampshire. It is so vigorous that in some countries it is considered an invasive species. We find it an incredibly useful ingredient all year round - when it’s in bud and then smothered in faintly fragrant cream flowers from midsummer on. By September the flowers are going to seed with long, gold, silky seedheads. Later in the autumn these become fluffy and turn grey-white which is how it earned the nickname ‘old man’s beard’.
The beautiful quince fruit is from a small tree in my London garden that each year reliably yields a harvest of exactly three fruits.