Meetings with plants: forget-me-not

Bramble & Briar #75

In winter, forget-me-nots aren’t all that much at look at. The yellowing leaves here largely due to soggy clay soil (they’ll be fine), though they won’t say no to a little nutritious mulching

Spring is the time when forget-me-nots shine. Winter, not so much. No one talks about forget-me-nots in the dark part of the year, maybe because that’s not a time when most folk choose to hang out in the garden. And quite possibly, even if they did, they would scarcely give these plants a thought. A forget-me-not doesn’t look particularly, well...forget-me-not-y right now; no gentle blue mist hovering ankle-high above the ground, preserving the modesty of the tulips as they burst rudely through the soil. No tiny, winking golden eye, turning white to let the bees know someone’s already beaten them to the good stuff (I’ve only recently discovered that forget-me-nots do this, how cool is that?).

Which is all very well. The forget-me-not is a spring thing, I get that. But winter is when they start to assemble. So many clumps of downy green, spoon-shaped leaves, appearing in ranks among the detritus of the year’s spent growth.

I’m aware that the common forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) is a perennial plant but, like most gardeners, I tend to treat it as biennial, pulling it out of the ground once it’s scattered the seed for next year’s display. I could, if I could bring myself to be bothered, snip the flowered stems off and allow the plant to flower again next year, but since in everything but a particularly dry spring the top growth tends to suffer badly from mildew (powdery or downy, take your pick), it often makes more sense simply to start afresh. In either case, tardy tulips planters (you are my people) are likely to wander out into the winter garden, cheeks glowing with pride at having finally made time for the task, only to find the forget-me-nots have laid claim to exactly those parts of the beds and borders into which they’ve been intending to plunge their bulbs. This is how it should be – we’ll want that close partnership in April, but for now, they need to scooch out the way so we can get at the soil.

Thankfully, forget-me-nots aren’t precious about being moved about, and you can temporarily scoop them out section by section with the thrust of a laterally-angled spade (I’m sure there are those who will plant straight through them, but I like a clear canvass when I’m getting my bulbs in, and the ground cover distracts me). It can all be moved back when I’m done, and I might even divide a few clumps from particularly dense patches to fill in the gaps in more threadbare areas. I’ll tease individual plants out from the mass with my hands, and settle them into their new locations with the minimum of ceremony, and a whispered apology for the disturbance. I’m never quite sure if forget-me-nots sleep right the way through December, but I don’t like the idea of them waking up in a panic and wondering what’s going on.

At any rate, soon the tulips will be in, and the forget-me-nots back in place, as though nothing had happened; any shuffling about or relocation a quickly fading memory of a momentary disturbance in the long winter’s night. And the spring will be all the more glorious for the effort.

Spring’s the thing to make a forget-me-not sing