Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) and Crocus Tomasianus, reminders of Sissinghurst Gardens and Vita Sackville-West, surprise us here in Zone 7 at the end of February.
A front garden crowded with Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), a N.A. native, and Crocus Tomasianus surprised us last week during a drive through Salem, VA. Two of my favorite "small / minor bulbs," they remind me of the year I spent living near Sissinghurst Castle Garden (Kent, UK) and time spent in this remarkable garden.
Vita Sackville-West, writer, poet, and maker of Sissinghurst, along with her husband Harold Nicolson, writes of the yellow winter aconite and diminutive light purple Crocus Tomasianus in her long poem The Garden, published in 1946 and set against the backdrop of WWII. Winner of the Heineman Prize, this poem is very personal and symbolic. The seasons in the garden represent, to Sackville-West, the seasons of life.
"...consider too Crocus Tomasianus, small, so pale,
Lavender cups of tiny crockery;
The winter aconite with mint of gold
Like new-struck coins that shame the spectral sun
Hung in our jaundiced Heaven, - these are frail,
So frail it seems they scarcely could endure
One touch of horrid life and life's fierce wind."
Sackville-West also writes of these two tiny spring plants, especially the crocus, in Country Notes in Wartime (1940): "...The little lavender crocus, Tomasianus, is another wanderer, and some of the finest lilies of the valley I have ever seen..."
© Text by Georgene A. Bramlage. 2008. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
