Friday 9 April 2021
Bonnie Robinson
As March progressed the small carpet of sweet violets on my plot produced hundreds of fragrant flowers. Only a few years ago I begged a few plants from a friend and they have spread with satisfying alacrity, enjoying the dappled shade of my plum trees. My violets are the common variety which grow wild in English woodlands and hedgerows but the sighting of a clump of white violets on a bank at Blenheim Palace led me to place an order with Shire Plants. They stock a superb range of heritage violets in whites, pinks and even yellows. I am currently anticipating the arrival of ‘Mrs R Barton’, white with violet streaks, ‘Baroness Alice de Rothschild’, raised from a seedling which appeared in Alice de Rothschild’s French garden in 1894, and ‘Orchid Pink’, a shamelessly pretty pink to delight my daughter.