Total gridlock

At the time of writing I find myself on holiday on the Isle of Wight and against all the odds enjoying a sun soaked week more reminiscent of the South of France. The convoy of porta-loos on the ferry from the mainland speak of the imminent traffic chaos as the island prepares to welcome 75000 festival goers in a weeks time. 

Congratulating ourselves on our good planning, and lucky escape, it is congestion of another sort that awaits us as we enjoy the last leg of our journey before arriving at the holiday cottage, perched above St Catherine’s Point on the Southern most part of the island, with great views out to sea.

The damp, cold spring, that followed the cold, damp winter, has finally relented and advanced 2 months, virtually overnight, like a time traveller, into something resembling summer 2013. And the usual orderly, and well established, queue of flowering plants has descended into congested chaos. Polite floral society has given way to a frenzy of shoots pushing and leaves shooving, no time given to make way for another flower to enjoy their usual timeslot on the big stage. No less than a riot has ensued in gardens across the land, of such unusual intensity that even a water cannon will not prevail. It has been a riot of colour to be precise, and how fantastic.

Enjoy it will you can because you will probably never again see bright pink bergenias flowering alongside purple alliums or orange poppies dropping their petals amongst rosemary branches just peaking blue. Except perhaps at the Chelsea Flower Show. Cherries, crabapples & magnolias all arrived together like principal ballerinas forced to share a taxi during a tube strike, and the wisteria was compelled to share its foliage with a cheeky, and bizarrely early, rose.

This years strange floral combinations may just be a one off, or perhaps something we will have to get used to. It seems harder though than you might imagine, to watch the time honoured, and usually fairly reliable, timetable disrupted. It is the same slightly unsettling feeling you get when any unexpected change occurs and reminds you that life in the garden is always in flux.

A visit to a National Trust garden (surely a safe haven for the normal) barely helped to restore order. The garden at Mottistone Manor is the Trust’s most southerly ‘dry‘ garden and is a place where temperate meets Mediterranean. Combinations as strange as anything the retarded seasons can throw at us result, with Purple Elders looming over white flowering Libertia and a dark purple tropical looking persicaria (of unknown variety) rubbing shoulders with a more familiar hardy geranium. These combinations though, while unfamiliar are not disturbing and seem only to confirm that we are on holiday. At the time of reading perhaps something like normal service will have resumed.