The Gardener's Friend — On Digitalis
You are a recipient of Coucou Postale, a postcard series designed to engage and delight readers through stories and art using good old fashioned mail and the magic of the Internet.
Digitalis — Lopez Island, Washington 2017
One of the dangers of being someone who currently doesn’t have a garden to tend to is that I often idealize what it means to have a garden. Like anything worth cultivating, they require a great deal of work — or so I am told.
There is also the pesky fact that gardens themselves create an illusion that they are effortless. One needs to look no farther than the roadside to see the wonder that a sea of foxgloves creates.
Most likely it was the foxglove that planted the seed of belief that gardens benefited from being un-tended. I had been staying on Lopez Island, off the coast of the state of Washington, when during one of my long bicycling rides, I came upon a patch of foxgloves. Until then, they were the decorations the fairies of my youth wore, their flowers fitting like cheerful hats one might expect a fairy to don. Later, I would learn of their use in medicine — as a heart stimulant — but at that moment, they were a roadside distraction.
What they lacked in smell, they more than made up with their appearance. Unlike those I saw in the flower markets of Lucern, Switzerland, these extended to the sky well past my head, giving me no need to bend as I leaned in to smell them. They seemed regal with their purple spears of blooms that resembled a scepter. Their royal appearance seemed to tame the wild land on which they grew.
The following year I was back in Great Britain, this time walking the Pembrokeshire Coast of Wales heading towards St. David’s for supper. Past the solstice, the sun hovered like a golden orb unwilling to set. The road’s embankment, once green, was now gilded, glittering under a rising moon. In that gold was the real treasure: the foxgloves.
Foxgloves posses a somewhat magical beginning. It’s believed that their name originates from the Anglo-Saxon word “foxe-glewe.” “Glewe” meant music, and the term referred to an ancient hanging bell of the same name and shape. Foxgloves weren’t cultivated in England until the 1400s, and even later in North America, where they were valued for their medicine before becoming the darling of borders and backdrops.
It was a move towards a less formal, flower-centric design that gave birth to the English cottage garden in the 19th century, a style that still dominates the home garden. Since styles are generally space restricted, the foxgloves are an enviable specimen for creating vertical visual interest. One prominent gardener of the time, Joseph Breck, had this to say of the foxglove:
"It is suitable for the border, and may be introduced into the shrubbery with fine effect, as its tall, spire-like spikes, crowned with its large thimble or bell-shaped purple or white flower, will finely contrast with the green foliage of the shrubs.”
He’s to-the-point in a way I am not when it comes to flowers, which brings me back to seeing foxgloves for the first time, seemingly purposeless on the side of the road. In fact, they were doing something no book will point out. They made me pause. Gardening, in all the labor it entails, does this too, at least mentally-speaking. Once in the garden, the work becomes intuitive.
I see this way of working in my father as he’s shaped the land in response to what it needs. What began as a well-manicured lawn, has become a rolling meadow abuzz with bees hovering over blanket flowers, and an explosion of other blooms deemed weeds. The foxglove can be an emblem then, of the results of trusting our intuition, and of letting things be. —GF