Meetings with plants in winter: Turkish sage

Bramble & Briar #95

A host of hibernacula

By some measures, it’s spring, but my secateurs have yet to claim all their hibernal trophies and so, in certain segments of the garden, winter clings on. One of the last plants to fall victim to an outburst of vernal tidiness is Phlomis russeliana, because... well. Look at it.

Turkish sage – to use a common name I’ve never heard anyone actually utter – has to be one of the most geometrically pleasing flowers in the garden, even if it is one which must, by virtue of it’s unapologetically yellow blooms, test the custard haters. I will happily entertain its yellowness in exchange for the delight brought about by its tiered floral units, appearing one above the other in whorls completely encircling the stem. Throughout the winter the seedheads persist, long after the yellow petals have dropped and the huge, floppy basal leaves have shrivelled to nothing. By early March, the whole structure is decidedly crispy – fragile to the point that an ill-directed sneeze is likely to blow the whole lot to pieces. But the perfect architecture charms, and I’ll leave them standing as long as I possibly can.

Of all the seedheads in the garden, this one captures my imagination as the most hospitable over the colder months. I picture each chamber within these storied Space Needles occupied by some tiny critter, drawing the covers over themselves for the winter, content to have discovered quite such perfect accommodation. I can’t bring myself to topple the structure for the sake or something as trivial as a spring-clean, and so quite possibly these will be the last remnants of last year’s garden to go. Always assuming the spaniels don’t take them out with one of the canine handbreak turns for which a flowerbed seems the perfect arena, or the gardener doesn’t snap them off with a characteristically clumsy blunder.

It’s a plant that revels in space and being planted in drifts and, true to form, I’ve ignored both here. It wasn’t even remotely a considered introduction – I had a single plant left over from a job, and heeled it in quickly to the edge of a border to ensure it would survive while I wondered what to do with it. Of course, it’s neither moved from the spot, nor been joined by more of its kind. It flowers by the bench and table I sit at when writing – my outdoor office – making it one of the most gazed-at plants in the entire garden. Not bad for something bunged into the soil without ceremony – I shudder to think how lost it might have become had I subjected it to something as formal as a planting plan.

A wintery Phlomis russeliana in the outdoor office