Found this delightful bit of gardening lore somewhere...
The garden should be adorned with roses and lilies, the turnsole, violets, and mandrake; there you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, garden-cress, and peonies. There should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic, pumpkins and shallots. The cucumber growing in its lap, the drowsy poppy, the daffodil and brank-ursine ennoble a garden. Nor are there wanting, if occasion further thee, pottage-herbs: beets, herb-mercury, orache, sorrel and mallows, anise, mustard, white pepper and wormwood do good service to the gardener.
- Alexander of Neckham, Of the Nature of Things, 1187
We don't have quite everything growing out in the gardens - what is herb-mercury? What is orache? Smallage? Pellitory? Wow! But we do have the 'drowsy' poppies. We have a few stands of peonies...
And on the border with the neighbours, wild roses have made their annual debut.
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